1772992 - View > Custom > people I know view broken, not listing any messages (in old profiles)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[Eric Moore]

I'm running TB 102.0b3 under Windows 11Pro. It has a FolderFlags and CompactHeaders add-on, which I've disabled. I had customized the main toolbar to add the View widget. I selected custom views -> "people I know" while viewing the inbox of my main account (Fastmail IMAP). The folder listing is empty. Its been a while since I used that but it used to work fine.

I tried the four other predefined custom views and they work fine. I used customize and edit to examine what "People I know" actually contains. It has "Match all of the following" with "From" "is in my address book" "Personal Address Book". That should display hundreds of messages.

I checked the sender for many of the messages is in my personal address book. I even viewed some messages, clicked on the edit contact icon after the From: email address in the headers and verified that the contact was in my personal address book.

I switched to safe mode using help -> troubleshooting mode. I had to customize the toolbar again to add the View widget. Same problem. However, the same search filter via Edit -> find -> search messages works in safe mode.

If I restart into normal mode I see that "From" only has "contains" and "doesn't contain" options. It doesn't have "is in my address book". That is is only present in safe mode.

While in safe mode I created a saved search folder that duplicates "people I know". However, it also works when run in normal mode.

• View -> custom views -> "people I know" fails all the time
• The equivalent using Edit -> find -> search messages works only in safe mode (because that restores the missing "is in my address book" filter)
• A saved search folder equivalent of "people I know" works all the time. The only issue with it is you can't create it except in safe mode.

My copy of Thunderbird 102.0b3 shares a profile with Thunderbird 91.10.0 whose shortcut adds --allow-downgrade . I also have a copy of daily 103.0a1 (2022-06-06) (64-bit) which has its own profile.

I have the exact same symptoms with both 91.10.0 and Daily.

I did a little more testing and found that if I unchecked "run search on server" Edit -> find -> search messages has all of the filters for From: . i.e. it now has "is in my address book".

I switched from Fastmail to Gmail , Outlook , Yahoo , Comcast and Mailfence and found that while custom views -> "people I know" breaks for their inbox, "run search on folder" doesn't hide "is in my address book".

So it looks like something broke recently in the View widget for custom views -> "people I know" and there is some limitation in what searches the Fastmail Cyrus IMAP server will do unless you are in safe mode.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

change your view to recent messages
Open error console
clear error console
change view to people I know

Do you see something like the following in the error console?
NS_ERROR_FAILURE: No directory for uri=moz-abmdbdirectory://abook-4.mab 1241 AddrBookManager.jsm:266
getDirectory resource:///modules/AddrBookManager.jsm:266
associateView resource:///modules/SearchSpec.jsm:108
_applyViewChanges resource:///modules/DBViewWrapper.jsm:1474
set viewTerms resource:///modules/SearchSpec.jsm:263
setMailView resource:///modules/DBViewWrapper.jsm:2023
ViewChange chrome://messenger/content/msgViewPickerOverlay.js:59
ViewChangeByMenuitem chrome://messenger/content/msgViewPickerOverlay.js:66
oncommand chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xhtml:1

Comment 2

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

(In reply to Eric Moore from comment #0)

My copy of Thunderbird 102.0b3 shares a profile with Thunderbird 91.10.0 whose shortcut adds --allow-downgrade .

Um, this sounds like a not good thing to be doing.

Comment 3

[Eric Moore]

Arthur:

Why do you thing its a bad thing to do? The difference is only one major version , I can handle the side effects it has on add-ons and rarely use global search (which I assume is the most effected component).

Wayne:

Yes. What I see is almost identical:

NS_ERROR_FAILURE: No directory for uri=moz-abmdbdirectory://abook.mab 41 AddrBookManager.jsm:266
getDirectory resource:///modules/AddrBookManager.jsm:266
associateView resource:///modules/SearchSpec.jsm:108
_applyViewChanges resource:///modules/DBViewWrapper.jsm:1474
set viewTerms resource:///modules/SearchSpec.jsm:263
setMailView resource:///modules/DBViewWrapper.jsm:2023
ViewChange chrome://messenger/content/msgViewPickerOverlay.js:59
ViewChangeByMenuitem chrome://messenger/content/msgViewPickerOverlay.js:66
oncommand chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xhtml:1

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to Eric Moore from comment #3)

Why do you thing its a bad thing to do? The difference is only one major version , I can handle the side effects it has on add-ons and rarely use global search (which I assume is the most effected component).

You can't do it safely without bugs - that's why it's not allowed easiily. For 91 -> 102 data formats changed for panacea.dat (folder meta), and address book at least. The data migrations are one way, so flipping between the versions will get you into odd non-supported (cannot-be-supported) states.

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Just came across this.
For profiles created before we migrated the addressbook from mork, under the "View" toolbarbutton, "People I Know" view won't work - as mailViews.dat contains the old abook.mab address. https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/d58c4eb87ff1#l3.11

JavaScript error: resource:///modules/AddrBookManager.sys.mjs, line 282: NS_ERROR_FAILURE: No directory for uri=moz-abmdbdirectory://abook.mab

This would need migration or some fixing on the fly.