Closed Bug 286649 Opened 19 years ago Closed 19 years ago

Address book entries disappear and then address books disappear unless they include a mailing list

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Address Book
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 299346

People

(Reporter: huizhe, Assigned: mscott)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206)

About two weeks ago, all the entries in my address books but the Personal
Address Book disappeared. A day or two later, the address books disappeared. I
imported LDIF files from Mozilla 1.5 to replace them. The address books for
which I created a mailing list remained, but the new ones disappeared again.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. There's nothing I need to do but open Thunderbird.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
First the contents of my address books diappeared, and then the address books
disappeared. Except for the Personal Address Book and three address books with
mailing lists.

Expected Results:  
Kept the address books and their entries.

I checked the bug reports and found nothing like this.
I should have added that the address books are still in the Thunderbird profile
folder, but it appears that every time I open the program, it makes an empty
backup of the address book and renames the original address book with all the
entries "impab.mab-[address-book number].bak", and the new versions are all 2-kb
files.
Summary: Address book entries disappear and then address books disappear unles they include a mailing list → Address book entries disappear and then address books disappear unless they include a mailing list
Version: unspecified → 1.0
I can confirm this bug. I also have the impression that also address book
containing lists are cleared sometimes.
I was not able to figure out when address books are cleared. Months ago it
happened the first time, lately it is really frequent.
Also: not all of my address books are cleared simultaneously. Just now, only
three are cleared, the others remain unchanged.
Very strange and VERY annoying!
I can also confirm this bug: a couple of weeks ago I re-arranged my Address Book
(AB) (which till then only consisted of the Persoanl AB (PAB), and the Collected
Address. I have added several new AB, and have created several lists within
them, after moving entries (copying, then deleting) from the PAB to the new ABs.

Today I have noticed that the extra ABs are gone - with all their entries and
lists - however - some of the address mysteriously have re-appeared in my PAB !

After looking under E:\Documents and Settings\<my name>\Application
Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.722, I have noticed the following files:

abook-1.mab 34KB 19-Mar-2005 16:31
abook-2.mab 35KB 19-Mar-2005 16:31
abook-3.mab  5KB 19-Mar-2005 14:34
abook-4.mab  3KB 18-Mar-2005 19:27
abook.mab   31KB 01-Apr-2005 17:52



(In reply to comment #3)

My version is also 1.0 (20041206) - but Hebrew Localized version.

PS: I'm using version 1.6.0.0e (20050317) on Win XP, SP2
Keywords: qawanted
Happens to me as well, maybe after I switched to 1.0.2.

In my case, when the address books disappear, I can find them renamed in teh
profile directory as abook.mab.bak, abook-1.mab.bak, and abook-2.mab.bak. 

Removing the ".bak" makes the address books visible in Thunderbird, until they
are renamed again with ".bak" (This happens about once a day).

I tried updating to latest nightly, and to create a new profile. Does not help.
I have the impression that this happens when thunderbird crashes (which happens
quite often for me). Can anyone of you confirm this?
(In reply to comment #7)
> I have the impression that this happens when thunderbird crashes (which happens
> quite often for me). Can anyone of you confirm this?

TB never crashed for me yet:) 
The address books are wiped on my PC every couple of days, when they are renamed
as "file.mab.bak". My guess is that when TB tried to create a scheduled backup,
it was successful renaming the file but failed to create the new file.
If someone could email me direct a copy of an address book that "disappears" 
(the file.mab.bak version) I may be able to look at it and determine why this 
is happening. It's most likely that thunderbird is identifying it as corrupt, 
however, it should also be notifying you on startup if that is the case.

I will keep any address books on my local machine only and remove any copies 
once I have finished looking at them.


Some questions that I'd like answers to that may help in solving this problem 
(to all those that have already posted on this bug(:

1) Has anyone seen this on linux?
2) Did anyone have a corrupt address book notification message at any time 
before they noticed the bug?
3) Do you have any extensions installed, if so which ones?
4) Do you have google desktop installed? (I especially want to know if you 
don't have it installed - cross ref bug 292207).

And if anyone can send me a copy of a backed up address book that would be 
useful as well (see comment #9).
Keywords: qawanted
1) I use Win XP, SP2
2) I didn't receive a corrupt address book message
3) Enabled Extensions: Mouse Gestures and Quote Colors
4) I use google desktop. But if I remember correctly, this already happened
before, but I'm really not sure.

Did you receive the sample mab.bak file I emailed to you?
1) Has anyone seen this on linux?

I don't use linux, on XP SP2

2) Did anyone have a corrupt address book notification message at any time 
before they noticed the bug?

No.

3) Do you have any extensions installed, if so which ones?

I can't remember because I deleted Tbird a month ago, but now I've reinstalled
it because other things were happening to Mozilla 1.7.6, like it kept asking me
if I wanted it to be the default browser and mail app. No matter how many times
I said yes, I got the same questions every time I opened it. Therefore, I've got
Tbird 1.0.2 (20050317) installed again and the address books are fine now. The
only problem I've been having with both Tbird and Mozilla (now uninstalled
again) was that when I attached files from one folder on my E drive to an email,
it displayed the first 8 characters of name of the filefolder and not the file.
Tbird does the same for that folder, but not other files in other folders. This
is weird.

There are other weird things happening on my system, though, so I think all this
stuff is related to XP and not to Mozilla products. For example, I wasn't able
to use Acrobat 5.0 to turn MS Word 2000 docs into PDFs for some strange reason.
I uninstalled both and now I can't reinstall MS Office 2000 because some font
files were missing. I went to the Web and downloaded them, but XP wouldn't
install them properly: it change the name from, eg, ***BI.ttf to ***B0.ttf, so I
had to download and use the trial version of MS Office 2003.

I think I'll have to wipe my HDD and reinstall everything.

4) Do you have google desktop installed? (I especially want to know if you don't
have it installed - cross ref bug 292207).

Yes, I do have Goggle decktop installed. If that's the problem, I'll gladly
uninstall it. In fact, I'm going to try that right now.
(In reply to comment #10)
> 1) Has anyone seen this on linux?
I'm on WinXP SP2

> 2) Did anyone have a corrupt address book notification message at any time 
> before they noticed the bug?
Nyet

> 3) Do you have any extensions installed, if so which ones?
Bidi Mail UI 0.6.2 (for changing ltr to rtl when composing/displaying messages)

> 4) Do you have google desktop installed? (I especially want to know if you 
> don't have it installed - cross ref bug 292207).
Not installed, never installed.

> And if anyone can send me a copy of a backed up address book that would be 
> useful as well (see comment #9).
Sending now...
My address book problems disappeared after I un-installed Google Desktop. For
over a week now I did not lose any address...
Depends on: 292207
Hi, I've logged an entry at case # 298551

Specifically, Google Desktop is clearing out my address book .mab files.

We have recently checked in a couple of bugs that will hopefully fix this or at
least help diagnose it. See bug 299346 and bug 287003. The fix should be in the
latest nightlies, but will most certainly be in the next beta release. Please
comment on those bugs if you are still having problems.

I'm duping this bug to 299346 as that seems the closest one.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 299346 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
No longer depends on: 292207
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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