Open Bug 1803913 Opened 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Inconsistent behavior and persistent breaking changes when mail folders are not available - warn when (external) storage is not available

Categories

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Thunderbird 102
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: dinumarina, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: dupeme)

Steps to reproduce:

I have set my mail folders (in Account Settings/<account>/Server Settings/Local directory) to a removable storage. Then opened Thunderbird with said removable storage detached.

Actual results:

I was shown randomly blank entries on email view. No error message. Unified folders were persistently broken (subscribed folder list removed from every unified folder). This unified folders problem persisted even after reattaching storage and restarting Thunderbird.

Expected results:

Missing local folders is obviously an operational exception so there should be a prompt about it, followed by a consistent and predictable action (I'm thinking, either quit Thunderbird or recreate local mail folders in default paths, or work in IMAP-only mode). Whatever happens, state should remain consistent. Inconsistent changes should not be persisted (like, permanently breaking Unified Folders).

A warning might be possible. But I sincerely doubt non-breaking behavior as a result of removing storage will be supported.

Component: Untriaged → General
Keywords: dupeme
See Also: → 1092593, 881966
Summary: Inconsistent behavior and persistent breaking changes when mail folders are not available, → Inconsistent behavior and persistent breaking changes when mail folders are not available - warn when (external) storage is not available

For now, I'm using this hack: I replaced the Thunderbird start link with a link to a .bat file that opens Thunderbird that resides on the same storage. So if storage is not mounted, Thunderbird won't run :) But it sure would be nice that any app won't trash data on error... just refusing to run would be cleaner until graceful handling is implemented.

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