219586 - Eudora, Outlook mailboxes with "/" in name fail to import

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Matthew Wilson]

Using Thunderbird 0.2 and importing email from Eudora 5.2.1 "Light mode", 2
folders with a name including a "/" character failed to import.

Renaming the folders to remove the "/" character and re-importing with a clean
profile worked correctly.

Not sure which Component this should be on.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Same as Mozilla Mail&News bug 140212.
See also Bug 124287 Meta bug: Problems with folders having names with illegal
charactersbug

Comment 2

[Alexander Boronka]

I observe the same with Outlook Express Mailboxes, Thunderbird 0.3 RC, and 
Win98.

Comment 3

[david potocnik]

Bug still not removed in Thunderbird version 7.3.0 !

The problem you need to solve, as described in earlier reports, is how 
Thunderbird handles the "/" (slash) character while importing messages from 
other mail clients.
 
A more detailed description of what happened in my case:
After installing Thunderbird version 7.3.0 (the one available for download on 
5.august), I tried to import my mail messages from MS Outlook Express, version 
6.00.2800.1123 . Everything seemed to go along allright, until Thunderbird 
threw out an error message claiming it cannot import a folder named "MUSIC / 
NEWSLETTERS". I repeated the procedure two times, but it failed each time, 
with the same error message. Thunderbird also stopped responding when i tried 
to open the "bad" folders, and they were impossible to get rid off! This is 
not a minor level bug!

After removing and reinstalling the application, I returned to Outlook, 
renamed the folders which contained the slash sign, and tried to import again. 
Everything was OK.

If you need any more info, I would be glad to help.

Regards,
David, Slovenia

Comment 4

[Scott MacGregor]

this would be a nice fix to have to roll out with the new migration stuff in .8.

David, I have a spot in the migration code where I can translate source folder
names (the name of the folder in Outlook, Eudora, etc.) to a destination folder
name (the name of the actual folder in tbird). 

1) We could leverage that code to check if the name has a '/' in it and convert
that slash to something else

2) We could look into making folders with slashes work in mozilla (that may be a
bigger undertaking...see Bug #140212)

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

would it be possible to munge/escape the disk/folder name, but set the pretty
name to a string containing the slash?

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

Note to self: 

One could rename the name of the folder we create around here:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/mailnews/import/src/nsImportMail.cpp#877

then set a pretty name on the folder that gets created

Comment 7

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

*** Bug 230319 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: possible fix

Comment 9

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 156391 [details] [diff] [review]
possible fix

David, what do you think about fixing the bug this way:

1) nsLocalMailFolder was already hashing the folder name into a
"safefoldername" for the actual folder on disk. But it still used the user
specified name for the name of the summary file, for the RDF URI that
represents this folder,etc. etc. Hence all of the problems. 

2) This patch attempts to fix ::CreateSubFolder to use the safe (hashed) folder
name everywhere when constructing the folder. Then right at the end, we use the
real user passed in name as the prettyName on the folder. 

3) This patch also allows users to create local folders with slashes in them as
this bug wasn't import specific.

4) Do we need to fix this for imap or should we just treat that as a separate
bug.

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

*** Bug 257833 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Scott, can your patch cause Bug 264071 problem?