377072 - Cannot delete messages from IMAP account on Exchange

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Rachid Finge]

User-Agent:       Opera/9.20 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.0 (20070326)

When selecting an e-mail message from an IMAP account that resides on an Exchange Server, Thunderbird fails to delete the message and returns an error in a dialog box.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the IMAP account that runs on the Exchange server mentioned.
2. Click on a message in the mail view.
3. Press DEL on the keyboard
Actual Results:  
The following error appears:

Alert
The current command did not succeed. The mail server responded: [TRYCREATE] The requested item could not be found..

Expected Results:  
Move the message to trash (on server and on screen), then show next message.

The server on which this IMAP account resides identifies itself as follows:

* OK Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 IMAP4rev1 server version 6.5.7638.1 (~server address~) ready.

All other functionality seem to work properly. I can read e-mails, and when they are marked as read, for example, Outlook (through Exchange Server) will acknowledge that. That's also vice versa: when a message is marked as read in Outlook or Outlook Web Access, Thunderbird will be notified accordingly. 

Furthermore, receiving messages works fine too - through IMAP IDLE support, messages appear immediately when received.

There have been no authentication problems as well, so it doesn't seem likely the problem is due to a lack of rights.

I have another IMAP account that runs on Dovecot. The problem does not appear on that account.

Comment 1

[Rachid Finge]

Three additions:

a) This issue also appeared in Thunderbird 2.0 beta 2.
b) Obviously, I am able to delete a message when using Outlook, connected through Exchange.
c) Since the error reports an item that cannot be found, I reindexed the mail folder, but that did not fix the problem.

Comment 2

[Arie Paap [:wildmyron]]

I can not reproduce this problem on Windows XP SP1. I am running Tb 2.0.0.0 (20070326) and connected to a similar Exchange server as yours [identifying itself as: * OK Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 IMAP4rev1 server version 6.5.7638.1 ... Using port 143 (no secure connection) and Deleting messages is set to "Mark as deleted".

A protocol log may help here: http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#imap

Comment 3

[Rachid Finge]

Attachment: IMAP Protocol log

The log file demonstrates the problem.Please focus on the hctext.hollandcentraal.nl server, the other server, mentioned in the beginning of the log file, does not feature this issue.

Comment 4

[Rachid Finge]

Thanks Arie. The difference is that deleting messages is set to "Move to Trash" in my case.

Comment 5

[Arie Paap [:wildmyron]]

Hmm. I couldn't reproduce by changing the deletion method. Then I logged in via a webmail interface and deleted the Trash folder. I can now reproduce. Looks like there's no folder named Trash on your server.

You'll either need to create it (probably using a different client) or change which folder is used: see Bug 24064 Comment #98

This is basically the same as bug 370899, bug 369461 and bug 159420 but those are all unconfirmed. It could probably be duped to Bug 112657 which is the same (according to it's original report) but the discussion there has expanded to cover a range of other issues with deleting mail on IMAP servers. I had a look at a range of bug reports regarding this and basically: it's a horrible mess of bugs duped to unrelated bugs and discussions within a bug being forked to cover other problems, going all the way back to Bug 27785. 

I don't really do much Thunderbird QA, I'm more involved with Firefox, so I don't know if Thunderbird should actually try to create the folder as suggested by the server, or not. However I have been unable to create a folder called Trash using Thunderbird once it has been deleted from the server.

Comment 6

[Rachid Finge]

I just figured out the default folder on Exchange in which trash is stored is not called "Trash", but is named "Deleted Items".

As far as I can see though, there is no way in Thunderbird to specify which folder should contain removed messages, even though the GUI does provide a way to set the folder for sent items and drafts.

I can successfully subscribe to the "Deleted Items" folder and it indeed contains the items deleted through the Exchange protocol, but I cannot map it as the Trash folder in Thunderbird.

Comment 7

[Rachid Finge]

Sorry, I now noted the method to fix this issue through prefs.js. I will give that a try. I'd second Bug 182274 as a means to create a GUI for this.

I have set the status of this bug to Invalid, as this is turns out not to be a bug in the protocol backend. Please advice if I should request an enhancement through a new entry in Bugzilla.

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

You may need to specify it as Deleted%20Items - i.e., escape the ' '