282277 - Lost 6 months of email when I changed my "Local Directory" in tab "Server Settings" in dialogue box "Account Settings"

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Bruce Hampton]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I had 6 months of email stored on C: drive, imported from Outlook. I wished to
move this email box to E: drive, as I was rebuilding windows on C: drive. I
selected "Tools..Account Settings", then "Server Settings". Under "Local
Directory", I selected the new directory for my email repositry to be stored, on
E: drive. Thunderbird deleted all my previous emails, instead of doing what both
Outlook and Outlook Express would have done: copied the email repositorys from
C: to E:. A search of my C: drive for *.msf files revealed that they had indeed
been deleted - there was no *.msf files left.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

See above.
Actual Results:  
See above.

Expected Results:  
See above.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Thunderbird never deletes mail files when "Local directry:" setting change.
Read thru next FAQ first.
 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Changing_Mail_Storage_Location
(Be careful on term "folder". It's folder(=directry) of MS Win, not "mail
folder" of Thunderbird.) 
And describe difference between the FAQ and what you did, please.

By the way, please note that restart of Thunderbird is required after "Locla
directry:" setting change, because Bug 2654 is still open. 
> Bug 2654 : localPath(change of Server Settings/Local directry) does not take
effect until restart
This is the meaning of next in the FAQ.
>You will need to restart Thunderbird to see the changes.
This bug is described in "Known Issues" section of "Release Notes" of almost all
release of Mozilla, but is not described in any "Release Notes" of Thunderbird. 

Comment 2

[Bruce Hampton]

I can also note that I
a) changed the folder
b) Thunderbird deleted my original folder, with all the *.msf files in it.

There are no *.msf files left on my C: drive; I lost a significant amount of
important data when this happened.

Note that I did not manually copy the *.msf files before I changed the folder; I
expected this to be performed automatically, or at least be given a prompt to
copy the files over automatically.

I suggest that a dialogue box is added "Do you wish to copy your mail files to
the new location?" when the default directory is changed, and that directory is
empty.

Bruce.

(In reply to comment #1)
> Thunderbird never deletes mail files when "Local directry:" setting change.
> Read thru next FAQ first.
>  http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Changing_Mail_Storage_Location
> (Be careful on term "folder". It's folder(=directry) of MS Win, not "mail
> folder" of Thunderbird.) 
> And describe difference between the FAQ and what you did, please.
> 
> By the way, please note that restart of Thunderbird is required after "Locla
> directry:" setting change, because Bug 2654 is still open. 
> > Bug 2654 : localPath(change of Server Settings/Local directry) does not take
> effect until restart
> This is the meaning of next in the FAQ.
> >You will need to restart Thunderbird to see the changes.
> This bug is described in "Known Issues" section of "Release Notes" of almost all
> release of Mozilla, but is not described in any "Release Notes" of Thunderbird. 

Comment 3

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I suggest that a dialogue box is added "Do you wish to copy your mail files to
> the new location?" when the default directory is changed, and that directory is
> empty.

Reporter of Bug 280852 also says so.
I don't know enhancement request is already opened or not for it.

> There are no *.msf files left on my C: drive; I lost a significant amount of
> important data when this happened.

> Note that I did not manually copy the *.msf files before I changed the folder;
> I expected this to be performed automatically, or at least be given a prompt to
> copy the files over automatically.

Bruce, did you format C: drive already?
If no, how did you try to find ".msf"?
If not thru "search", thru Windows Explerer(folder list),
can you see hidden files by Windows Explerer?
If not, try next.
 (1) Change Folder Options/Display - Uncheck "hide hidden files"(or like this) 
 (2) Go C:\Documents and Settings\<User_ID>\Application Data\Thunderbird
 (3) See Profile directry and subdirectries of it.
     Thunderbird profile is here, then you may be possible to find mail files,
     since you say you didn't delete mail files.
Good luck. 

Comment 4

[Bruce Hampton]

Thunderbird is OK.

The files appeared to be missing, as searching for *.msf files under Windows
does *not* return anything, unless files with extension .msf are registered. One
has to register the .msf extension first, by opening a random .msf file, and
selecting "Always use this program to open this file".

The Windows search dialogue is extremely misleading, it does not "Search for all
files and folders", it only searches for files that it has extensions for in its
registry.

I found the *.msf files after doing the trick above.



(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > I suggest that a dialogue box is added "Do you wish to copy your mail files to
> > the new location?" when the default directory is changed, and that directory is
> > empty.
> 
> Reporter of Bug 280852 also says so.
> I don't know enhancement request is already opened or not for it.
> 
> > There are no *.msf files left on my C: drive; I lost a significant amount of
> > important data when this happened.
> 
> > Note that I did not manually copy the *.msf files before I changed the folder;
> > I expected this to be performed automatically, or at least be given a prompt to
> > copy the files over automatically.
> 
> Bruce, did you format C: drive already?
> If no, how did you try to find ".msf"?
> If not thru "search", thru Windows Explerer(folder list),
> can you see hidden files by Windows Explerer?
> If not, try next.
>  (1) Change Folder Options/Display - Uncheck "hide hidden files"(or like this) 
>  (2) Go C:\Documents and Settings\<User_ID>\Application Data\Thunderbird
>  (3) See Profile directry and subdirectries of it.
>      Thunderbird profile is here, then you may be possible to find mail files,
>      since you say you didn't delete mail files.
> Good luck.