1356938 - Start in offline using an old profile of imap account whose server account no longer exists and newer version of Thunderbird, after restart online the messages are deleted

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Richard]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

add a new profile and point it to a profile that was created on a version older than 40 and open it, the messages are shown but after you close and reopen they are all gone . Also the folders that where created all get deleted. Note that the server that that imap folders points to no longer exists NUT all messages where saved locally


Actual results:

Open profile and messages are there and after you close Tbird and reopen the profile messages and additional folders that where created are all deleted


Expected results:

Since the messages are saved in the profile I shoud be able to create my active account and transfer the old messages to the new imao server

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

You mean:
> Note that the server that that imap folders points to no longer exists BUT all messages where saved locally.

So when you open TB on the old profile, you get a connection error since the server doesn't exist?

Comment 2

[Richard]

No, If i try to open the profile on line all the message files are erased. and if shows no messages.  Only after I restore the profile from a backup and  open the old profile offline, all the messages are there and also all the folders that I created are there, but  when I close the old profile and open it, still offline, all the messages are gone and all the folders that I created are gone. Also when I look into the profile folder, after I close, only the .msf files remain, all the email content files were erased.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Javi, do you have a non-gmail imap account you could test this with?

Comment 4

[iamjayakumars]

Hi, I didn't face any issue with my thunderbird. 

System Info: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.1.1

I tested with the following mail server (IMAP)
-gmail.com
-outlook.com
-yahoo.com
-icloud.com

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I'm not sure how this would work per the reporter's request.

I'm pretty sure we have other bug report(s) for this. I know for sure there's a bug report for making a Thunderbird account "inactive" so it doesn't attempt to contact the server.

Comment 7

[gene smith]

I don't completely understand the STR provided by the reporter of this bug. However, with the description in the marked duplicate bug 1934120, I am pretty much able to see the issue:

• Create a new profile (profile-1) with one simple test account with offline store enabled.
• All folders working correctly and mbox files populated.
• Change server address to an invalid value, e.g.: mobile.charter.net -> mobile.chartertn.net
• Now get error when checking for new mail.
• Export profile-1 to zip file and shutdown profile-1
• Create a new profile (profile-2) and import the saved zip. Of course, can't connect to server.
• All the folders and emails visible in profile-2, but several have new names: Sent-1, Templates-1, Drafts-1 and original names present but empty.
• Shutdown profile-2 and open profile-1
• Folders and messages in profile-1 are still OK even though can't connect to server.
• Shutdown profile-1 and open profile-2. Of course, can't connect to server.
• Most folders and ALL messages in profile-2 are now GONE. Only see Inbox listed but it is EMPTY.
• Shutdown profile-2 and run profile-1 again. All folders and messages still present in profile-1.
• Check once more profile-2. It's still empty.

Looking at files in directory ImapMail for profile-2, only .msf files remain, including ones for Sent-1, Templates-1 and Drafts-1. All mbox files are gone.