197527 - mail notification, saying that new mails arrived, pops up, but no mails are shown in the list

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Sven Panko]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

Yesterday I switched from 1.3beta to 1.3final and experienced a strange problem.
When the mail client is set to automatically check for new messages, sometimes a
notification window pops up, saying that a new email has arrived, but when I
switch to the mail account's inbox in the tree view, no new mails are shown.
Also, when I click on the notification icon in the taskbar notification area, it
switches to the correct inbox, but no new mails are shown there.
I don't know, if there are really new messages downloaded (because I do not
leave copies of the mails on the server) and just got "lost" or if the
notification mechanism is just going crazy and actually there are no new
messages. In the first case, I think this problem is severe.
When I deactivate the "auto-check for mails" option in the preferences and click
on the "get mails" button manually, this error does not occur.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. set one of your mail account to automatically check for emails
2. wait until new email arrives
3. click on the notification icon or change to the inbox manually and see if
there are any mails

Actual Results:  
no new mails are shown

Expected Results:  
show the mails it notfied me about

Comment 1

[Patrick]

Do you have the junk mail filter enabled with a move to JUNK mail folder?
The new message can then be found in your JUNK box and not in your INBOX

Comment 2

[Sven Panko]

Negative, I already tried this! My junk mail controls are not enabled and I do
not have a junk folder. I also have no filters installed or took any other
measures to change the behaviour of message displaying.

Comment 3

[Ben Smith]

I think I may be seeing the same bug.  I wasn't having this problem until I
upgraded to 13, then I started getting new mail notifications like "43 new
messages", but when I would go to the inbox, there would be no new messages. 
I'm running 1.4a now, and I still have this problem.  This is an IMAP account,
and when I access it from another machine running Mozilla 12 I don't have the
problem.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Sven: do you have a POP or IMAP mail account?  Does Ben's description match your 
experience?

Ben, just to clarify:  It says "43 new messages" in the popup alert?  What about 
the folders: does the count of message next to the folder name also indicate new 
(unread) mail?

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Also: see bug 203844 for a possible duplicate (and solution).

Comment 6

[Sven Panko]

Hello Mike,

I am using a POP account, not an IMAP one. And no, the label in the treeview
does not tell me that I have new unread mail. Only the small popup window above
the TNA icon says so.

Comment 7

[Olivier Vit (just a reporter)]

Reporter, I suggest that you monitor what happens in the JavaScript console
I face similar issue and get 
Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057
(NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIRDFService.GetResource]"  nsresult: "0x80070057
(NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://messenger/content/msgMail3PaneWindow.js :: SelectFolder :: line 1421" 
data: no]
Source File: chrome://messenger/content/msgMail3PaneWindow.js
Line: 1421

on 1.4 branch latest win2000 and xp

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Ben Smith: in case you are still following this bug, bug 147473 is specifically 
about this problem with IMAP accounts.

Sven Panko: what is your status with this bug?  Have you upgraded to Mozilla 1.4 
or 1.5 yet?  Have you tried Oliver's suggestion in comment 7?

Comment 9

[Olivier Vit (just a reporter)]

on build 2003113008 winxp I have the following error in javascript console:

Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057
(NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIRDFService.GetResource]"  nsresult: "0x80070057
(NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://messenger/content/msgMail3PaneWindow.js :: SelectFolder :: line 1418" 
data: no]
Source File: chrome://messenger/content/msgMail3PaneWindow.js
Line: 1418

which is:     var folderResource = RDF.GetResource(folderUri);

Comment 10

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Actually, Oliver's symptom seems orthogonal to this bug.  He describes his 
situation in depth in bug 209658, but that case does not suppress the list of 
new mails in the list, nor the green arrow on the account or folder.  At least, 
it doesn't for me.

Comment 11

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Sven Panko, are you still monitoring this bug?  Do you still have this problem 
with current builds of Mozilla (or Thunderbird)?

In the TB bug 252484, a possible dupe of this, someone mentioned another 
possible cause of this problem (for POP mail): In the server settings for the 
account, is "Automatically download new messages" checked?  
I assume it *is* checked in your case, since the original report is "sometimes" 
the notification appears with no subsequent new mail.

Comment 12

[Sven Panko]

Yes, that's right, the checkbox is enabled. If I do not enable it, the behavior
does not show up. Anyways, I switched to Thunderbird last month (and linux as
well) and I do not experience the problem there.

Comment 13

[Patrick]

Sven: does this still happen?

Comment 14

[Olivier Vit (just a reporter)]

I didn't noticed this problem any more (using 1.7.3 or 1.8b)

Comment 15

[Sven Panko]

No, I do not experience the problem in Thunderbird 1.0 (for Windows)

Comment 16

[Patrick]

-> wfm