1649415 - (prior to version 115) Duplicate 'ghost' emails created when opening Thunderbird Unified Inbox (imap)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 209501

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Sean]

Attachment: thunderbird.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.162 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Opened Thunderbird to read my emails.
Thunderbird immediately checks for new emails (IMAP)

Actual results:

Thunderbird opens, but regularly duplicates a number of emails (not all). Using File --- Compact Folders removes the duplicates.

When using other email products (Evolution, Nextcloud webmail app, Gmail Android app) the problem does not occur.

I have created new Thunderbird profiles and gone as far as to wipe the entire hard disk and reinstall Linux Mint, but the problem persists and has been ongoing for years.

Expected results:

Thunderbird should only show a single copy of each email.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Reporter, does this happen for you when using version 78? You can update by going to help > about.

Comment 2

[Sean]

Unfortunately as I'm on Linux, Help > About doesn't give me any update options. I'm still waiting for Ubuntu to update the repository (which they seem to be taking much longer than usual over) so I can try 78 without having to add yet another ppa. They seem to be focusing on Groovy at the moment, so may have to wait for Focal.

Comment 3

[Sean]

After waiting a month for Caconical to update Thunderbird, I manually downloaded Thunderbird 78.3.0 a couple of days ago. This morning there was another duplicate email showing which I had to remove using File --- Compact Folders as previously.

I can therefore confirm this is still an issue.

Comment 4

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

I have been experiencing the same issue for a few months with Thunderbird on Windows. I am currently using TB 102.6.1 with Unified mailboxes. Today, I even have up to 4 copies of some mails. I am using TB for 14 mailboxes, some in POP, some in IMAP. I just tried compacting the folder, but I still see several copies of the same mail. The problem usually occurs on one or two mailboxes at a time, meaning that when I look at my Inbox in the morning, most frequently the last mails are not duplicated, and suddenly one day TB batch duplicates mails from one mailbox. Using Remove Duplicate Messages to find duplicates, I see that all my mailboxes are affected. This happens only in the incoming folder, not Sent and Archives

Comment 5

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

I cleaned my duplicates using the plugin. Only 3 of my pop mailboxes had duplicates, all the other pop boxes were clean. Those which had duplicates were probably those which had the most activity. I cleaned my first IMAP, and when I was about to clean the second IMAP box, I realized that the "duplicates" were actually mails with more than one tag (which TB incorrectly maps to a folder). So I decided not to do anything about the other IMAP boxes. I guess the plugin removed many tags, but I don't think there is any way to recover them. At least, the mails were probably not deleted.

Comment 6

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

After checking folders to the plugin settings, it doesn't find any duplicate mails. This means that all duplicates happened in pop boxes.

Comment 7

[alreadyinuse]

this bug may be the same as these bugs:

The same email is displayed on two lines.
bug 1848738

Emails in a thread are shown twice as duplicated on receiving
bug 1844007

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Sean, does this still reproduce for you when using version 115?

Comment 9

[Sean]

Version 115 isn't available in the repository for Linux Mint yet unfortunately so I'm still on 102. I don't remember seeing any duplicates for the last few months though so don't know if it's still an issue or not but, based on the other two bug reports noted above, I'm guessing it is.

I'd rather keep to the repository version but if it hasn't been updated in the next few weeks I might do a manual install of 115.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Frederic Da Vitoria from comment #6)

After checking folders to the plugin settings, it doesn't find any duplicate mails. This means that all duplicates happened in pop boxes.

If this happens for you using version 115, please file a new bug report for pop. (keeping this bug for imap)

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to alreadyinuse from comment #7)

this bug may be the same as these bugs:

The same email is displayed on two lines.
bug 1848738

Emails in a thread are shown twice as duplicated on receiving
bug 1844007

Thanks, but I think version 115 issues will have different causes and best not to mix with older bug reports, given that for those reporters the problems started with version 115.

Comment 12

[Sean]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #8)

Sean, does this still reproduce for you when using version 115?

115 dropped in the Ubuntu repository the other day so is now running on my PC. This morning an email came in which showed twice and then disappeared after I clicked on Deleted Items and back on the Inbox.

Comment 13

[Sean]

Further to my previous message, since installing 115.3.1 the other day I have now seen these ghost emails at least three times. Prior to this update I hadn't seen it for a few months, so this update (for me at least) has made the issue worse.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Sean, you are using a saved search or unified folder?

Comment 15

[Sean]

Hi Wayne. I do use the unified folders to make it easier managing multiple email accounts.

Comment 16

[Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw]]

Sean, do you see any improvement with version 115.9?

Comment 17

[Sean]

Hi Harmut. I haven't seen any duplicates in the last month or so, which can only be a good thing.

Comment 18

[Sean]

Hartmut! Apologies :)

Comment 19

[Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw]]

Sean, thanks for your feedback! While most cases of phantom mails in unified folders seem to have been fixed in bug 646168, there appear to be others. I'll close this and suggest to continue in bug 209501 if necessary.