195335 - Mail restored on Exchange Server is not displayed and is compacted away on exit.

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[Tom Tyson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

Bug 195330 details how e-mail was lost in the first place.

This behavior is in the 1.2.1 version and 1.3b version of Mozilla

Mozilla deleted a bunch of mail ~2500 messages, some legitimately and
some due to bug 195330.  For simplicity the help desk staff used a
feature of the exchange server to restore these ~2500 messages.  They
appeared in the Outlook Client.  They did not show up in Mozilla (
Asside from the special purpose Calendar etc. folders this is the
first time I have noticed Outlook display something that Mozilla doesn't.)

Two variants of the bug(I rolled back to 1.2.1 for the second try):
1. Started Mozilla 1.3b:
   See message 'Compacting...' When it finishes all the restored mail is
   gone.  Outlook doesn't see it any more, and Mozilla displays only the
   messages from before the restore.

2. Mozilla 1.2.1 running while messages are restored by Exchange server:
   Messages appear in outlook but don't appear in mozilla.  Upon exiting
   the mozilla client, no 'Compacting...' message seen, but messages 
   dissappear again in Outlook and Mozilla.

The messages had to be restored with Mozilla closed, then copied out of
the inbox into an archive, and saved before Mozilla could be used again.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
See above.
Actual Results:  
Mozilla appears to be keying off something Outlook ingores to decide that the
messages are still deleted, and it compacts them, deleting them.

Expected Results:  
Mozilla should allow these messages to be restored.

This microsoft KB article describes a way to restore mail deleted from
any folder (in this case the Inbox) if you have an Exchange server to
test against, it might help to allow you to reproduce similar conditions.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];178630

As far as I can tell this issue affects any mail deleted in any
way from any folder on an IMAP server.  Outlook sees the restored
mail and Mozilla compacts it away.  I haven't tried deleting with 
Outlook to see how Mozilla treats that mail.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

are you talking about IMAP? Or are you talking about local messages? I don't
think Outlook uses the berkeley mailbox format for local messages.

Comment 2

[Tom Tyson]

I'm refering to mail in the Inbox folder on the IMAP exchange server.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

well, Compact is an imap command, so whatever it does is up to the server. My
guess is that these messages still have the deleted flag set on them, so by
default, Mozilla will compact them away. You can configure Mozilla to show you
deleted messages, by going into the account manager and changing the "When I
delete messages" to "mark it as deleted". Then, you'll see all your deleted
messages. If you want to undelete them, you can. I don't believe this is a bug -
by default, we don't show you deleted messages, but we have an option to allow
you to see them.

Comment 4

[Tom Tyson]

O.K. I'll try to confirm that.  Outlook does not appear to
consider them deleted messages.  If you are correct then
I would classify that as a work around.  

Comment 5

[Tom Tyson]

Your suggestion does work.

I changed my prefrerences to mark messages deleted.  Deleted mail.  Compacted.
Closed Mozilla.  Restored the mail with the registry hack and Outlook, re-opened
Mozilla.  Saw the message marked as deleted.  (In outlook they weren't marked as
deleted.)  Selected them and undeleted them.

I'll use this procedure on the mail I lost and I should be able to get my
mail back into my inbox.

It would be very helpful if there were a way for Mozilla to recognize that mail
that didn't previously exist in a folder showed up as new deleted mail and
overide the user selection (displaying the deleted mail) so the end user can see
that it is there and prevent it from being compacted away again.  I suppose that
falls into the category of a feature request.  

Who knows how MS is handling this in their Outlook client.  If the Outlook
client is marking the mail as not deleted, but not updating server right away
then that would explain the different behavior.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.