1323421 - create a new IMAP folder with some other mail client, the new folder does not automatically appear in Thunderbird's folder list

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.99 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Install Thunderbird (Nightly, Aurora, Alpha, Beta, Stable(latest)).
Configure imap mail accounts, create folders.
Create folders everywhere you want with some other program on your imap server.


Actual results:

You'll see these folders trying to subscribe them in the folder subscription list. But whatever you do, these folders will never pop up in the folder pane. You may collaps then expand the list to no avail. You may go offline, then online again. These folders created by an other application will never show up. You may even terminate thunderbird, then start again. Sometimes thunderbird will rescan, sometimes it will not.


Expected results:

Thunderbird reliably rescanning your imap server for new folders recursively. There should be a way to trigger this without restarting thunderbird.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you still see this when using current version 52?
WHich ISP?

Comment 2

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard

Comment 3

[Tristan Miller]

Can this bug please be reopened? It is still consistently reproducible for me with Thunderbird 60.8.0 (64-bit) on openSUSE Tumbleweed using my own Dovecot IMAP server, and also my employer's IMAP server (not sure what it's running).

If I have a Thunderbird instance open and then create a new IMAP folder with some other mail client, the new folder does not automatically appear in Thunderbird's folder list, and there is no obvious way to get Thunderbird to immediately force a refresh. Collapsing and expanding the parent folder has no effect; pressing F5 likewise has no effect. If I right-click on the account and select "Subscribe…" then the new folder does appear in the folder list of the "Subscribe" dialog, and already has a checkbox to indicate that it is subscribed. However, pressing "OK" has no effect on the folder list in the main window.

Restarting Thunderbird does seem to force a refresh of the folder list, but it would be nice if this weren't necessary. (For instance, sometimes Thunderbird is busy doing something and I would rather not interrupt it with a restart.)

What also works is unsubscribing and then subscribing again to the new folder. This finally causes the folder to appear in the folder list, but again, this is rather kludgy.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

hopefully someone can confirm and component-ize :)

Comment 5

[Matt]

Have you tried renaming the folder tree.json file in your profile folder. Close Thunderbird and do so. My guess is it is possible corrupt.

Comment 6

[Tristan Miller]

The problem is still reproducible after removing the folderTree.json file and allowing Thunderbird to regenerate it.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you still see this when using version 78?

Comment 8

[Tristan Miller]

I can still reproduce this problem, exactly as described in Comment 3, using Thunderbird 78.8.0.

Comment 9

[Matt]

Is show only subscribed folders set in account settings > server settings > advanced by any chance?

Comment 10

[Danny Colin [:sdk]]

.

Comment 11

[Tristan Miller]

Yes, though as I previously mentioned, the new folder does show up as subscribed in the "Subscribe" dialog.

Comment 12

[[e-mail]]

Bug is alive again: Thunderbird 88.0b2:
Install Thunderbird. Configure your gmail-account, configure some OpenExchange-Account. Wait until all folders and mail are copied. Do some work, then quit thunderbird.

Now go to mail.google.com. Create folders, delete some folders.
Do the same with your private OpenExchange.

Now start Thunderbird again. The new folders will not pop up automatically. You'll have to subscribe them manually.
Deleted folders stay visible, but produce errors aka "folder not found on server". You'll have to unsubscribe them manually.
In some cases these folders cant even be unsubscribed! Error: "folder not found on server".
Sometimes Thunderbird asks you if you want to remove this folder locally.
Sometimes Thunderbird even recreates these delete folders on your server.

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

You can easily test this with any IMAP-Server available: have two instances of Thunderbird running on one machine, accessing the same IMAP account. Or have one Thunderbird running on Windows, the other one running on Linux (and Solaris, Haiku, ...).
Now make sure you've enabled pushing changes on your server. Next start working on one of your various Thunderbirds.
Changes are not automatically seen by any of the other running instances. You'll have to tell them to fetch and sync mail to notice any changes.

Comment 14

[gene smith]

The only way TB with an IMAP account currently has to "discover" new folders is to restart or do the collapse/expand at the top level (account name). However, there is a known problem with the latter when the account uses OAUTH2 authentication like with gmail. Reporter [e-mail], you also mention "Open exchange". I'm not sure, is it also IMAP and does it also use OAUTH2 authentication or just "Normal Password"?

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to gene smith from comment #14)

The only way TB with an IMAP account currently has to "discover" new folders is to restart or do the collapse/expand at the top level (account name). However, there is a known problem with the latter when the account uses OAUTH2 authentication like with gmail. Reporter [e-mail], you also mention "Open exchange". I'm not sure, is it also IMAP and does it also use OAUTH2 authentication or just "Normal Password"?