228500 - Mail subfolders refuse to be deleted sometimes.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Neil P. Pena]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7

When trying to delete a mail subfolder using any method (DEL key or Right-Click
-> Delete Folder), sometimes it refuses to be deleted (but displays no error). 
Doing one or more of the following before trying again usually results in a
successful deletion:
1. Just try deleting it again.
2. Empty the trash first, whether or not something is in it.
3. Restart Thunderbird
I was able to reproduce this bug almost all of the time (for some reason it did
not exhibit this behavior 2 out of the 10 tries).

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select a folder.
2. Try to delete it by pressing DEL on the keyboard or Right-Click it and choose
Delete Folder.
Actual Results:  
The folder may stay where it is.

Expected Results:  
The folder should be moved into the trash.

Comment 1

[xolaware.llc]

i have had this problem on thunderbird on mac os x also.

it would seem that the problem is easiest to reproduce for a folder that has a
subfolder.

it would seem that the way mozilla/thunderbird does this is
[a] copy the folder to the trash folder in the underlying os
[b] then delete the folder in the underlyiing os
[c] finally, mark the trash in the mozilla/thunderbird UI as being in the trash

this manifests because when i delete the folder, the folder does not actually go
away or appear in the trash, but if i attempt to delete again, it says i cannot
create a folder in the trash of the same name, even though when viewing the
trash in the folders sidebar, it doesn't appear that such a folder exists in the
trash.  if i quit thunderbird & restart, then the old folder appears both in the
trash and in its original location.

Comment 2

[james davis]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040401

Win2k - so maybe it is all Win? Haven't tried linux

I've got an empty folder that I can't delete too.
I can make a new folder but I can't rename it. I think the whole folder
operations stuff needs reviewed again (update test cases?).

Weird - I just made a new folder (foo), moved folder bar's mail to it.
Couldn't delete the old folder (bar). Renamed the new folder "foo" to "foofoo".
Renamed the old folder "bar" to "foo" and now "foo" can see the same messages
that "foofoo" has...

Comment 3

[Artem Astafyev]

 Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (X11/20040208)

I create subfolder (ex. 123) and then trying to delete it. I've got such
message: "RENAME failed: can't create mailbox node /home/xxx/mail/Trash/: File
exists". Option "Delete: Move to trash" is enabled. Here is session listing:
4 lsub "" "mail/123/*"
4 OK LSUB completed
5 close
5 OK CLOSE completed
6 rename "mail/123" "mail/Trash/123"
6 NO RENAME failed: Can't create mailbox node /home/xxx/mail/Trash/: File exists

This problem exists both in windows and Linux versions.

Comment 4

[Garret Wilson]

Following up Artem's comment, my verion (20040803) *always* gives the same error
(cannot move the folder to trash) when I try to delete a folder. This is
probably because on the server I'm using IMAP20002e with the Linux mail format,
which does not allow both subfolders and messages to be in an IMAP folder.
Trying to move the deleted folder to the Trash folder therefore fails.

If I change the Thunderbird settings from "move to Trash" to "mark as deleted",
the deletion succeeds. Thunderbird needs to somehow know to just delete a folder
if the server can't allow folders in the Trash folder.

(I'm unsure whether this issue is the same as that original described.)

Comment 5

[Nicholas Shewmaker]

I've had similar problems running TB 0.8 on Win2k.  I imported folders from OE,
which included sub- and sub-sub-folders.  Those are the ones that seemed to give
me the most trouble.  I moved them around (from Inbox to Local Folders), which
copied instead of moved.  So, I then tried to delete the folder and its
subfolder from the original location.  It remained onscreen.  I tried again and
got a "folder with this name already exists in the Trash folder" error.  When I
emptied the trash, I could repeat the process (delete, delete, already exists).
 I finally just deleted the folders through Explorer.

Comment 6

[John McIntyre]

I have Thunderbird 0.9 (20041103) with Windows XP Home SP2 (and Firefox 1.0),
and have the same problem with inconsistent deleting of mail folders and
subfolders. The same sort of problem affects moving mail folders: some will move
and partially copy, i.e. some subfolders will be copied, but not all, and the
original folder/subfolder tree stays where it was. Deleting is totally
inconsistent and unpredictable. It looks like the mechanism for handling folders
is faulty for most or all functions: move, copy, delete, rename. It may be
connected with importing? All my mail folders were imported from MS Outlook. The
problem was found when trying to tidy up the mail folder tree by moving the
imported folders into the main Thunderbird folder structure and delete the
Imported from Outlook folder. In addition I created an Outbox folder before I
found out about and installed the "magic" extension. That installed its own Send
Later folder, but the Outbox folder cannot now be deleted, so the folder tree is
getting very cluttered.  

Comment 7

[Garret Wilson]

Here's something I found out that may be related but I hadn't got around to
posting here. My IMAP folders had been originally created by MS Outlook Express,
and I noticed that some folder created by Thunderbird (and Mozilla) were shown
in italics on the client. I finally went to /home/user/.mailboxlist on the
server and realized that the folder names created by Thunderbird ended in '/',
but those created by Outlook Express did not.

I added '/' to the end of all my folder names in .mailboxlist, and suddenly
Thunderbird recognized them as folders by displaying them in italics. Maybe
Thunderbird tries to move folders that aren't marked as such to the trash using
a different method than those that are marked as folders. See if adding '/' to
the folder names in .mailboxlist allows deletion.

Comment 8

[Joerg Starkmuth]

Problem still exists in Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (Win XP). Some (not many) folders cannot be deleted. However, after renaming an affected folder, I was suddenly able to delete it without problems.

Comment 9

[ovidiu]

Could this be duped for bug 388781?
Along with bug 314413

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Does anyone still see this with tb3 alpha/nightly builds?
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/3.0a3/

Comment 13

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Magnus, it would have been better to dupe this bug against bug 314423 which contains more information, like the testcase, the confirmation on all platforms and that it only occurs on 2.0 branch. But anyway, as I said WFM on trunk.

Comment 14

[buovjaga]

Yep, no problem anymore. Closing.

Thunderbird 52.1.0 (32-bit)
Windows 7 64-bit