1421249 - Right-clicking on e-mails in message pane periodically stops working, uninstall reinstall

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[najoll]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171112125346

Steps to reproduce:

Opened Thunderbird.
Right-clicked an e-mail.


Actual results:

Nothing at all happened - no context menu appeared.

I'm surprised there is no existing bug report - that I could find, anyway - about this. For the problem has existed for a long time.


Expected results:

Right-clicking on an e-mail should always produce the context menu.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

right clicking where...   In message list?  In message pane?

Does it reproduce in safe mode?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

Comment 2

[najoll]

> right clicking where...   In message list?  In message pane?

Ah. I should have said. I think the answer is anywhere, but certainly in the message list. ('I think'? Yes - see below on the intermittent nature of the bug; I cannot check at the moment.)

> Does it reproduce in safe mode?
I do not know and I will have to wait to find out - because the bug is solved, for days or weeks or months - by reinstalling Thunderbird (and I did reinstall recently, in order to fix the problem).

Comment 3

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

It has never happened to me that right-clicking in the thread pane (also called message list) didn't work. You must have a gremlin in your box which you exorcise with reinstalling.

Comment 4

[najoll]

At least one other person has or had the problem; see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1037921.

As soon as the problem reoccurs I will report here on whether it occurs also in safemode.

Comment 5

[najoll]

The problem has reoccurred, allowing me to be more specific.

The problem consists in the following. Right-clicking any e-mail that is displayed in the main pane does nothing. Right-clicking somewhere in the tree view *does* continue work.

The problem does *not* occur in safe mode. Indeed entering safe mode seems to have solved the problem, i.e. after entering safe mode, the problem does not beset normal mode - though I imagine that at some point the problem may recur.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to najoll from comment #5)
> ...
> The problem does *not* occur in safe mode. Indeed entering safe mode seems
> to have solved the problem, i.e. after entering safe mode, the problem does
> not beset normal mode - though I imagine that at some point the problem may
> recur.

If that is true, then the problem is caused most likely by an addon, or the hardware acceleration settings (at tools > options > advanced > general > Use hardware acceleration.

najoll, can you determine which one?

Comment 7

[najoll]

Wayne: the problem has yet to reoccur.

My graphics settings - see https://imgur.com/a/fbCr1

Comment 8

[Jay]

I have this same kind of issue, where right clicking on messages in Thunderbird often stops working.  In my case, I can restart Thunderbird and it works again.  Sometimes (very often, today) it only works for a single message.  I use right click a lot, because I have "Quick Folder Move" installed, and it would not surprise me if that were a factor.  Indeed, that is probably the only reason I use right click - so "Safe Mode" may not be all that helpful for me.  

Extensions Installed: Enigmail 1.9.9, Lightning 5.4.5.2, Provider for Google Calendar 3.3, Quick Folder Move 1.4.1 and ImportExportTools (which is currently disabled).  Quick Folder Move was updated on December 24th, and it would not surprise me if that is when this started, and I see one other complaint on the Quick Folder Move page.  On that page is a "workaround" of sorts, where you can to do another menu (e.g. File => New) and then it works again.

What is interesting is that all of this happened in the last week or so, and along with that was another change which was very positive.  I don't actually view my inbox.  Rather, I have filters that move it into a "Local Inbox" folder (along with other folders) in multiple accounts.  It used to be that it never showed me new messages coming in, and now it does.  That is a Good Thing (tm).

Comment 9

[najoll]

@wsmwk: The problem has reoccured now, though a temporary switch to safe-mode fixed. I've disabled graphics acceleration. I'll see whether that fixes - well, works around - the problem permanently.

Comment 10

[Jay]

FYI, after using the menu-click workaround, as of a day or two ago, mine started working reliably as well.  So I looked, and voila!  there was an update to the "Quick Folder Move" add-on on 2018/1/6 which is when it started working reliably again (v 1.5). [So now I have the best of both worlds:  right click works, and retrieving mail even though my folder for viewing mail is the result of filters both work).

Comment 11

[najoll]

@Jorg K:
I - the original reporter - to not have the 'Quick Folder Move' extension. So, please re-open this bug.

Comment 12

[najoll]

I said in a post above that I would report back on whether disabling graphics acceleration fixed the problem. This is that promised report. I had graphics acceleration disabled, and the problem *has* recurred.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

In this query https://mzl.la/2D4GYAK and a similar one for Core+Firefox I find tidbits 
- Bug 1115170 - Menus not appearing when left or right clicked with hardware acceleration enabled (incomplete Thunderbird)
- Bug 823028 - Right click context menu is not displayed properly with HWA off (open Core)

So there have been similar reports in the past. But exceedingly rare.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I can't believe that reinstalling would help, unless software other than Thunderbird is involved.

(In reply to najoll from comment #4)
> At least one other person has or had the problem; see
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1037921.

That issue was about the message list, not the preview pane.

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I do not think this is our problem. Plus according to comemnt 5 it doesn't happen in safe.