283645 - Import Outlook mail. Folder names containing ":" are lost / replaced / corrupted.

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: Migration, defect)

Description

[O J]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: THUNDERBIRD 1.0 (20041206)

This is related to Thunderbird storing mailfolders as OS folders and thus facing
OS folder names restrictions on Windows (i.e. ":" is not allowed in a folder
name). There must be better workarounds for that issue.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
0.Prepare an outlook .pst file with folder names containing ":" characters.
Switch to Thunderbird. 
1.Tools/Import
2.Follow the wizard: select Mail and Outlook
3.Check Folder Names

Actual Results:  
Some folders have names as "6d93a87f". These folders have a ":" character in the
original name.

Expected Results:  
Folder names as "SAS: Tech".
As I understand that this is probably not possible with Thunderbird, I would
appreciate "SAS Tech" or "SAS- Tech".

Linked to "https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131013" but as 131013 is
reported as fixed, I create a new bug.
Also linked to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124287 but 124287
aims at Mozilla suite and seems not to focus on migration/import with statements
about  preventing the user to assign "difficult" folder names.
All such folder names are lost, hence the critical status.

Comment 1

[alutian]

Not critical...

The 'folder name' onscreen is just a text label. It can contain any 
characters. 

The 'folder name' where the OS stores the mail has to conform to the OS naming 
requirements. 

TB tries to use the text label. If it fails, then it seems to use any unique 
string - usually giberish! 

Solution: Right-click on the 'folder name' and rename it. Anything you like - 
you are only changing the text label, not the name of the storage folder. 

Not really a bug? In Outlook... You see the label, but it could be linked to 
any filename. You can even rename folders so that label A refers to folder B, 
and label B refers to folder A. If TB used the underlying OS filenames, 
probably even more people would be confused! 

Comment 2

[O J]

I feel that we got lost on implementation details.

If I import a Outlook .pst file, I expect both mail messages and folder names 
to be correctly reproduced. Although it is pretty easy to assign a new folder 
name, it might be difficult to find out what the original names were and then 
to discover if the new "6d93a87f" or "7f87c45g" must be the old "folder name 1" 
or "folder name 2".

If a relative uses Outlook and I recommend Thunderbird, I will have to 
explain "Oh BTW, watch out if your folder names use any non standard 
character". :-(

Cheers

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.