1772570 - Address book won't load

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[macuc]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0

Steps to reproduce:

These symptoms started with v91.9.1 and continues with 91.10.0 on Windows 10.

• In Preferences >> General, "Default Search Engine" dropdown box is unpopulated.

• In Preferences >> Composition, Spelling, Language, dropdown box selection does not persist across restarts of Thunderbird. The last spelling dictionary in the dropdown is always selected on start-up.

• Address Books will not load!!! Clicking the Address Book button in the toolbar brings up the Address Book windows, but all panes are empty. Viewing the abook.mab and abook.sqllite files in a text editor shows that the address book data exists in these files, but they will not load. Viewing emails shows a filled star next to addresses that are in the address book. Clicking on the address, and selecting the Edit Contact pop-up menu item brings up the short form contact editor dialog box, which is populated with the address and the address book that the contact belongs to. However, clicking on the Edit Details button brings up a totally unpopulated contact editor window.

Actual results:

See above.

Expected results:

Should work as expected..

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Wayne, anything else we can do here?
Wfm per my analysis below, and not in good shape. Pls close wfm if you agree.

(In reply to macuc from comment #0)
Hello macuc, thanks for reporting your issues with TB.
Next time, please file one issue per bug - multi-issue is very hard to act on.
Also, please use the prescribed format with separate sections:

• Steps
• Actual result
• Expected result. Tia!

I am failing to reproduce any of your issues.
Maybe something happened to your Thunderbird profile.

• Are you running an AV program which may interfere with TB?
• Do these problems occur when you restart TB with ≡ > Help > Troubleshoot Mode…?

I think your best choice is to try getting support:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird/form

These symptoms started with v91.9.1 and continues with 91.10.0 on Windows 10.

• In Preferences >> General, "Default Search Engine" dropdown box is unpopulated.

Worksforme (wfm) on 91.10.0 (64-bit), Win10. SE dropdown is populated.

• In Preferences >> Composition, Spelling, Language, dropdown box selection does not persist across restarts of Thunderbird. The last spelling dictionary in the dropdown is always selected on start-up.

Worksforme (wfm) on 91.10.0 (64-bit), Win10. Maintains language choice across restarts of TB, first or last out of the two I have.

• Address Books will not load!!! Clicking the Address Book button in the toolbar brings up the Address Book windows, but all panes are empty.
  Viewing the abook.mab and abook.sqllite files in a text editor shows that the address book data exists in these files, but they will not load.

Worksforme (wfm) on 91.10.0 (64-bit), Win10. AB window shows normally with contacts etc.

Viewing emails shows a filled star next to addresses that are in the address book. Clicking on the address, and selecting the Edit Contact pop-up menu item brings up the short form contact editor dialog box, which is populated with the address and the address book that the contact belongs to. However, clicking on the Edit Details button brings up a totally unpopulated contact editor window.

Worksforme (wfm) on 91.10.0 (64-bit), Win10. Edit contact for Paul dialog shows up correctly populated on top of message reader.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The worst of these issues is "Address Books will not load!!!" so let's perhaps focus on that.

In addition to Thomas' excellent suggestions, check tools > error console for any relevant addressbook info.

Comment 3

[macuc]

Attachment: no_search_engines.png

Comment 4

[macuc]

Attachment: context_search.png

Comment 5

[macuc]

Attachment: address_book.png

Comment 6

[macuc]

Attachment: error_console.png

Comment 7

[macuc]

Wayne, opening the error console does not seem to work, there is a window frame with a completely blank interior.

I first installed Thunderbird with the initial release in 2003. This install is probably older than anything the current developers have on their systems. This install has slowly degraded in functionality in recent years. First starting with an upgrade about 2 years ago, after which my two gmail accounts stopped sending or receiving email. I installed a fresh copy of Thunderbird on a VM, set-up the same gmail accounts on that install, using exactly the same settings, and sending and receiving of emails worked perfectly. However, deleting one of the gmail accounts and setting it up again in my original installation did not fix the problem.

It is my theory that, over time, some upgrades are not fully taking configuration data from older installs into account and corruption is occurring. I don't have facts to back up that theory, other than the fact that a new install on a VM seemed to fix the gmail send/receive problem I was having.

I have nearly 20 years of archived emails on my install that I need to keep for my work. If I could figure out a way to completely wipe out this install, and re-install it without losing all my past emails, that might fix the problem. But I have been reluctant to do that since it could result in me losing my email archives.

Also, it seems to me to be a problem that upgrades occasionally break random bits of functionality in Thunderbird.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the screen shots - these often are much bettter at revealing problems than the written word.

Very important from Thomas ... Do these problems occur when you restart TB with ≡ > Help > Troubleshoot Mode…?
Also, do you have any language packs installed?

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Comment on attachment 9282256 [details]
context_search.png

Wow, where did you right-click to get this context menu? It's a complete mess of different menus combined...

Comment 10

[macuc]

To get that context menu, I highlighted a word of text in an email, then right-clicked. I wanted to show that the "Search for..." context menu item was messed up due to there being no search engines configured (and none may be added). The "[glodaComplete.webSearch1.label]" seems to be what is shown when there are no search engines. And yes, the context menu seems to have turned into a mega-menu that no longer fits on my screen.

I did have the language pack problem a while back, and removed all language packs, which fixed the slow configuration menu problem I was seeing. (In fact, I don't really see how I can add a language pack any more)

I tried troubleshooting mode; disabling all add-ons (I have none anyway), and resetting toolbars and controls. No symptoms changed. The only change I noticed is that it changed the View Density to Compact, and now displays a menu bar.

Also, when I first noticed all these issues, I tried re-installing the previous version of TBird, but no symptoms changed. So I reinstalled the current version at the time, and then upgraded to the next release when it came out. All symptoms continue.

Disabling virus scanning and firewall changes nothing either.

Comment 11

[macuc]

I believe all these problems were caused by corrupt sqlite files. Here is what I did:

• I installed the sqlite tools from sqlite.org.
• Opened a command line window and cd to my profile folder.
• Renamed all files with a .sqlite extension to have an extension of .sqlite.bak
• For each of those files I executed the following command...
  sqlite3 [filename].sqlite.bak ".recover" | sqlite3 [filename].sqlite

Result:

• Address book is working.
• Contact editing is working normally.
• Search engine settings are working.
• Context menu is back to normal.

The only problem remaining is that the Unified Inbox feature is not persistent. I have to keep re-enabling it. That problem seemed to show up after I used Troubleshooting Mode.

Suggestion:

• Make sqlite database backup/recovery a built-in troubleshooting tool.

Comment 12

[macuc]

If anyone cares, I believe I found the real cause of the context menu problem. I finally move my mail and accounts to a fresh install on TB on a new computer. As soon as I transferred my IMAP folder from my profile to the new computer and linked up the account directories, the context menu problems, and a new problem with unified folders not working showed up.

Then I realized, the mail in my IMAP accounts is all stored on the server, so I don't need to transfer the IMAP folder, just recreate the accounts. I deleted the IMAP accounts, deleted the IMAP folder, restored the original IMAP folder, the recreated the IMAP accounts.

Now everything is working.

If you are interested, maybe I could send the file contents of the corrupt IMAP folder for analysis, if that is possible without compromising my privacy.