1493761 - GMail IMAP - subFolder Renamed via web UI causes error popups in TB

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Jim Garrison]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:62.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/62.0
Build ID: 20180920131237

Steps to reproduce:

Starting from an existing GMail setup that is synchronized from TB with IMAP, with folders under INBOX (GMail "labels"). 

In the GMail web UI, rename a subfolder of INBOX.  Then in TB click on the folder.


Actual results:

A popup message is displayed:

The current operation on 'asdf did
not succeed. The mail server for
account [redacted]
responded: [NONEXISTENT]
Unknown Mailbox: INBOX/asdf
(Failure).

[[ Also note the missing close-quote after the folder name ]]


Expected results:

The folder name in TB should have been updated to match the new folder name.  If the IMAP protocol does not allow TB to detect the renaming, there should be an option to resynchronize folders/labels.

If you close and reopen TB, you initially get the same error popup, followed by the folder list updating correctly.

Comment 1

[Jim Garrison]

Attachment: Screenshot showing discrepancy between folder list and Subscribe dialog

Further research:

After renaming the folder in the GMail web UI, the "Manage Folder Subscription" dialog in TB shows the CORRECT (new) folder name, and shows it "subscribed", as seen in the attachment.  

I've tried things unsubscribing, then re-subscribing, but this has no effect on the old folder name in the folder list.  The "Refresh" button in the Subscribe dialog reloaded the folder list in the Subscribe dialog but did not affect the folder list in the main window. 

Also tried the "Repair Folder" action from the Properties dialog.  Invoking Repair from INBOX had no effect, attempting to invoke it from the renamed folder gave the same error popup described above.

Comment 2

[Codain]

I faced exact same issue using a Yahoo account with IMAP. I had a folder which I've renamed on Yahoo website one day ago. Today in Thunderbird (started several days before the renaming happened) the old name was still displayed and when I clicked on it I had a popup saying there was an error (containing "TRYCREATE") and Thunderbird seems to try to synchronize this old folder in infinite loop (loading circle in tab name with the old folder name). When trying to display the Subscribe windows it was also loading something and displaying nothing in the list (guess: the loading was probably queued after the failed-but-still-running folder loading).

Workaround:
Closing Thunderbird and reopening it solved the issue (I'm on Thunderbird 78.6.0 (32 bits) on Windows 10). And the subscribing window loaded the folder list very quickly with the new name.

Fix proposal:
I wish Thunderbird, when receiving this kind of TRYCREATE error from IMAP server, would have tried to detect wether the folder still exists/as been renamed and update its UI. If the issue as not been fixed, then display a popup error and stop loading. Since the issue was fixed after restart I suspect Thunderbird would be able to detect such issue.

Comment 3

[gene smith]

Another thing to try is to collapse/expand the folder tree for the account using the top-level > widget. This may force a "re-discovery" of the folders that normally only occurs at startup. However, this may not always work and I'm not sure why. Otherwise, currently a quick restart of tb is the only option.
Note also, when a new folder (or gmail label) is create outside of tb by webmail or another imap client, it may be initialized as unsubscribed so tb won't automatically show it unless in server advanced setting you set "show all folders even if not subscribed" which is off by default.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

How is this for you with version 115?

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We're lost without further response from reporters.