Closed Bug 261201 Opened 20 years ago Closed 14 years ago

inconsistent unread message count display

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: rkaye, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

The number indicating unread messages is often wrong and sometimes missing.
Behaviors I've seen include:

Wrong count is displayed until I click on the folder which then updates to the
correct number

Sometimes the count does not decrement properly after the message is marked
read. Compacting the folder ususally corrects this.

No number displays but the folder name is bold. Clicking on the folder refreshes
the display. (I've seen this reported but it seems related to the overall
problem to me.)


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.




This problem showed up in 0.8. 0.7.3 worked properly. I always completely
uninstall before installing a new build. I have not tried a new profile but I
have deleted TB's cache file (XUL?) with no change.
The second situation I mention appears to happen with the last unread message
but not every time. Also, I do have TB set to mark messages read automatically.
are these local/pop folders, or imap folders?

How do messages get into the folders? Via mail filters? Do you notice any
correlation between compacting your folders and this happening?
do you have tbird set to delay for 5 seconds the marking read of messages?
All POP, no IMAP.

I use a lot of filters since I monitor 6 different accounts. Everything appears
to get to the correct folders;it's just that the count is wrong so instead of
trusting it, I hve to click, click , click...

3 seconds, not 5.
are you using the global inbox, or does every server have its own set of
folders? When you click on the folder with, does it seem to be regenerating the
summary file?
I'm not using the global inbox yet. I access 4 different mail servers - 3 are
work related. However I do potentially filter from any one server's folders to
another server as well as filtering to folders in Local Folders. If the unread
count changing means it is rebuilding the summary file then I'd have to say yes
to your last question.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with you that it has something to do
with the way filters are working. The other thing I'm noticing since I moved to
8 is the behavior of the Junk folder. It's not clearing itself consistently. I
have it set to dump old junk but since I moved to 8, it seems like I have to
manually trigger that by running junk controls on the junk folder.
See bug 243832, bug 249271.  Are the filters marking messages as read, or 
deleting them?

In 0.8, I'm seeing my week-old spam consistently get moved to trash.  I think 
you may have to set that checkmark-and-field individually for each account, if 
you haven't already.
Thanks for the suggestion. Been there, done that. I've seen similar issues
mentioned in some other threads, too. Mail marked as junk in the junk folder
seems to be flipping its flag for no apparent reason. It doesn't seem to empty
itself based on time anymore. I have to manually run junk mail controls on the
junk folder which then changes most of them back and dumps the older stuff. I'm
consistently seeing odditities that appear to be related to filtering, including
the junk mail handling. Folder summaries that don't update automatically,
message counts (both total and unread) that don't adjust until you click the
folder, message counts including the messages that just passed through and were
sent on by a filter, read status that won't change on the last unread message...
I'm seriously considering rolling back to 0.7.3 as, imho, something got badly
broken in the filtering mechanism.
I've recently been noticing this bug.  In my POP Inbox, messages get filtered to 
a Bugzilla folder in the same account.  Occasionally, that folder is bolded but 
no unread count is shown; when I select the folder, then the unread count is 
displayed.
TB 0.8.  Messages marked-as-read immediately (altho I don't see how that applies 
to this).  MailView=All, QS empty.

As I noted at bug 243832 comment 7, I've also seen a similar issue with a 
message being deleted by a filter causing the Trash folder to bold without a 
count (again, with POP).  When I viewed the folder, the deleted message is 
unread, which is not the normal behavior, and the "(1)" appeared.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
I see this with

Thunderbird version 0.9 (20041103)

for both POP folders (only spam filtering setup) and for news folders.
Confirming on Linux. (POP3 in my case.)  Please see Debian bug report:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=277693
mozilla-thunderbird: Invalid new messages counter
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: PC → All
I have this problem with Thunderbird 1.0 on WinXP using POP. Compacting the
folder does not fix the problem, however selecting the folder does.
I should say re-selecting the folder (one of my inboxes) forces correct display
of the unread count temporarily. Selecting the folder when the count is
incorrect often causes the program to pause, showing the egg timer and not
displaying the folder. Selecting a different folder and reselecting the
incorrectly numbered folder forces display correctly.
This (or something similar) happens with me; running Thunderbird 1.0 on Win2k,
using POP. My behavior is somewhat different: read/unread count was fine,
initially, then it started to increase for some reason, marking most of my msgs
as unread in the process. I have about 10k msgs in inbox right now, but TB
reports I have about 170k and most of them are marked as unread; I've done
select all + mark as read a few times, but it seems like if I leave a TB session
open for awhile, most of my msgs (not all, and there seems to be no pattern as
to which get marked unread and which don't) get marked as unread, and the
unread/total count goes up by near-multiples of the actual count. I haven't had
time to sit down and figure out if they're actually multiples, or try to
reproduce the behavior, sorry.
I'm using Tbird 1.0 and I have a similiar situation:
I've used the mozilla suite before thunderbird and had set my mail locations to
a different place, than the default
TBird couldn't import my mail folder's correctly, so I had to copy them myself
This may have nothing to do with it, who knows...

Anyway, I had a huge inbox in one of my folders (few thousand messages, NO
global inbox)
And tbird kept displaying uncorrect red/unread message numbers, and the funny
thing was, this numbers kept changing, sometimes growing, sometimes decreasing.
Whenever the numbers where changing I just couldn't read/move/delete any message
in that inbox, I had to wait, until it stopped like a roulette wheel. Sometimes
even when the number isn't changing, I cannot access that inbox, it doesn't show
the contents for quite a long time, in which the cursor turns into the wait
image. All other inboxs were working correctly

After all this I deleted more than half of that inbox, compacted folder several
times and everything seemed to have resolved.
But a few days ago it started happening again. As if there were some magic
message count number, above which TBird gets drunk
I see at least a subset of the problems in the original report in Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 with no extensions or themes under Windows XP SP2 fully patched, but sporadic and not reproducible. I get mail from a POP server, have filter rules that move some if it to local folders, and sometimes the folder does not get bolded as having unread messages (if it starts out with no unread messages) and the unread message count does not get updated (even if showed some unread messages at first). Clicking on the folder causes it to get updated properly.

See possible dups bug 316768, bug 316946, bug 337331

See mozillazine thread http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2585870
QA Contact: front-end
Still alive on T'bird 2.0.0.9 . I have many filters, some of which mark messages as read. As mail is downloaded, I see the count going up, then down again, and eventually it goes to zero and the inbox folder loses its number, but stays bold. Visiting another folder and then going back to inbox restores the correct unread count. Folders that have unread messages filtered into them get correct counts.

It's quite reproducible as long as messages are being filtered; I'll take the mark-as-read action out of all the filters, and see it that has any effect on the unread count.
Confirmed - it's the mark-as-read action in the filters that causes the count to be wrong. It's as though the mark-as-read happens before the filtering, decrementing the count, and the count is decremented again when the message is moved to the target folder.
Possibly related bug 312610, bug 383598, bug 420260.
Blocks: 438257
version 3.0a2pre (2008062503), IMAP unread counts doesn't updated until you click on this folder. I set 
mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new=TRUE
mail.imap.use_status_for_biff=FALSE
Easy to reproduce, get new email to folder other than Inbox on different machine, start TB old unread count still there.
Assignee: mscott → nobody
Version: unspecified → Trunk
There is several race conditions in TB. For example, clicking on a mail to download it from the server, but then press (shift+)delete *before* TB has finished downloading the complete mail results in the mail being deleted but the unread mail count not updated. Additionally, the folder stays in bold font (even when there are no unread mails), and sometimes it can happen that the mail that you just deleted is displayed while the previous mail (since you have deleted that one) is highlighted in the folder view. There is tons of other race conditions like that. HTH for some of the implementers. Cheers
PS: Running regular TB 2.0, downloading from (slow) IMAP server, behavior present since the early days of running TB.
TB up to 2.0.0.21 still display this behaviour as before. Filters must filter mail to another folder AND mark it read. No disrespect - but I'm amazed this very obvious, visible, front-n-center UI bug has attracted no attention. Has anyone seen it on TB 3 beta?
3.0b3 still showing the bug, and it's worse: the unread count doesn't update properly until you revisit the inbox folder AND open a message in that folder.
still here in TB 3.0.4

using "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100430 Fedora/3.0.4-2.fc12 Lightning/1.0b2pre Thunderbird/3.0.4"
with imap with subfolders fed by filters

thunderbird filters messages into folders which then display the message counts on each folder.

when open folder the message count on the folder sometimes changes and the new lower number matches the number of
unread messages in the folder as seem when it opens.

so is the pre-opening count of messages wrong or do the messages get moved somewhere else or marked read as the open occurs?
did we loose messages or what?

ex: imap email for multiple accounts:
check mail.
mail downloads to inbox.
mail get moved to folders by filter rules.
folders have number on them for example a particular folder has an '8' indicating 8 unread messages in it.
open folder, folder count number changes from '8' to '4' and see only 4 unread messages.
what happened to the '4' other messages that the folder reported before opening?
doesnt look like just marking some as already read as open folder but might?

another folder went from count of 103 to count of 87
another from 2 to 1
another from 6 to 3

are maybe the messages in the associated folders being acted upon by multiple filters which cause overcounting?
was intermittent but havent seen this lately, maybe fixed?

currently running:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101103 Fedora/1.0-0.33.b2pre.fc14 Lightning/1.0b3pre Thunderbird/3.1.6
I was wondering whether there was an issue with reordering mailboxes via some plugin (Folderpane, I think: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/258/). At least that was the setup I was using on my old PC when I was experiencing that problem. I am using IMAP without such plugin since. Can someone confirm/refute my suggestion?
I have only seen this bug using POP. I now use IMAP and it no longer appears.
I'm pretty sure I saw this with IMAP, but there is a possibility I still ran POP. Ether way, quite a vanilla setup (no extensions or configuration hacks). However, the bug went away long ago and I forgot about it.
WFM per the latest comments.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
This problem still occurs for me, any way to re-open it?
closer:

0) regarding https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261201#c27 
i had the probme but didnt use the addon so maybe the addon wasnt related to the problem.

1)  regarding https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261201#c31 
just for completeness, greg what version of thunderbird are you using?
I am using 3.16 and I have many add-ons
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