I still this pretty regularly - its usually noticeable when my connection is poor quality - e.g. in a cafe or tethered to my phone - messages transmit, but the save fails. Sometimes hitting Retry works, sometimes it doesnt.

Even worse - unlike "Send Later" there is no way that I can find to make it try and save later, so you have to keep hitting Retry to make the dialog go away, or lose your local copy.

kokop

Comment 44

•

4 years ago

Hello,

I'm surprised to see that this bug is still open after more than 10 years...

It keeps happening for me, from time to time, on two different IMAP servers now. It's VERY annoying when it happens : the only way to male it work is to alternatively click "Retry" - or better hit Alt+R, and select the Sent folder with the mouse to open it. You need to do this quickly because as soon as you click "Retry" the error window reappears immediatly - you only have a few 1/10th of seconds to open the Sent folder and click on a mail inside (try and retry until you're able to select a mail in the Sent folder with the mouse).
Once you're able to do this, and once TB has made an IMAP connection to the Sent folder manually, the error message eventually vanishes, and you can see the sent message in the list.

It also happens on the "Draft" folder sometimes. Less probematic, because after clicking "Retry" you have a few seconds to access the Draft Folder manually and make it work again.

I would be happy to help if I can, as this is driving me nuts...

Thanks !

BMO Automation

Updated

•

3 years ago

Severity: normal → S3

dxtr80

Comment 45

•

2 years ago

Hello,

Still appears on 102.10.0 (64 bit), Win11.
I will check with setting (Maximum number of connections to cache) and set 1 for 2 IMAP accounts.

If the problem appears again I will update.

BR,
Robert

Andrea Venturoli

Comment 46

•

1 year ago

Practically all of my users (in different offices in different companies) have always experienced this from time to time.
However, with v115 it got much worse: I'm receiving daily calls from people who can't save their sent mail because they got stuck in retry/abort loop. The more fortunate one get it saved in a local folder (and unless they move those messages to the IMAP account, they won't reach backups).
I understand this is most probably due to connection problems, but most of them are on the same LAN as the IMAP server.
Windows and Mac versions seem to be equally affected.
Unfortunately it's not easy to get a log because it doesn't deterministically happen and these computers are mostly remote for me.

Has anything changed radically in the IMAP code from 102 to 115?

Just wild guessing (and notice I don't know anything about TB's internals)...
I bet ThunderBird "lost" the IMAP connections to the server (either the server dropped it, somehow the client changed IP, the Internet line had a disconnection, a stateful firewall is in the middle... whatever reason):
_ does it try to keep them open with some keep-alive?
_ is so, if the user left it idle for a while, would then it detect such connections were dropped?
_ given there should be no problem in reopening them, it seems it does so when a user visits a folder, but not when it sends a mail.
Does the above make any sense?

Burki

Comment 47

•

1 year ago

Same problem here with 115.4.x! Here is some logging when trying to save a draft email:

...
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:SendData: iteu8LsV2yoTgEfMTnA7gDnisVszeW6QzQdbtRqlx4deAW
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:SendData: wjYyx/311nH6GGus
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:SendData: 
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:CreateNewLineFromSocket: clearing IMAP_CONNECTION_IS_OPEN - rv = 804b000e
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:TellThreadToDie: close socket connection
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:CreateNewLineFromSocket: (null)
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: D/IMAP URL failed with code 0x804b000e (imap://XXXXXX@imap.secureserver.net:993/appenddraftfromfile%3E/Drafts%3EUID%3E)
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:ProcessCurrentURL: aborting queued urls
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc65dd1e600:imap.secureserver.net:S-Drafts:ImapThreadMainLoop: idlePending set
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc67a505400:imap.secureserver.net:S-INBOX:SendData: DONE
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc67a505400:imap.secureserver.net:S-INBOX:SendData: 55 logout
[Parent 27910: IMAP]: I/IMAP 7fc678e17f00:imap.secureserver.net:A:SendData: 121 logout

Hopefully there will be some fix soon...

dxtr80

Comment 48

•

1 year ago

Hello,

This issue is blocking user activity randomly while sending email messages (let's say some of the messages are urgent).

Firstly reported on 4th Dec 2007 and this issue has not been resolved after so many years...

TB version 115.4.3 64bit.

Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)

Updated

•

1 year ago

Flags: needinfo?(vseerror)

Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)

Updated

•

1 year ago

Comment 49

•

1 year ago

Addendum to my comment above: I had complained to my mail provider (DomainFactory) that sending mails with large attachments very often failed. The Windows mail client seemed to work without any problems, but working with Thunderbird was a disaster. The mail provider escalated my complaint and after a few days I received a message that "a patch" had been applied to the mail server so that the problem should no longer occur with Thunderbird - which was indeed the case! Sending mail with Windows' own mail client still seems to be a bit faster, but working with my beloved Thunderbird is possible again. Thunderbird seems to be somehow more sensitive to certain mail server settings.

Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)

Comment 50

•

1 year ago

Andrea, is version 128 better?

Flags: needinfo?(vseerror) → needinfo?(ml)

gene smith

Comment 51

•

1 year ago

(In reply to dxtr80 from comment #48)

This issue is blocking user activity randomly while sending email messages (let's say some of the messages are urgent).

Thanks for your reply over at Bug 1508649 where you referenced this bug report.
Can you be more specific as to what the problem you are having is?

Firstly reported on 4th Dec 2007 and this issue has not been resolved after so many years...
TB version 115.4.3 64bit.

Lots of work has been done to improve the "save to Sent" functionality since then. If it fails for some reason (e.g., server timeout while appending the message to imap mailbox as shown in comment 47 above), you should be able to retry the append or save the message to Local Folders. So a message composed and then sent should never be lost.

Mitra Ardron

Comment 52

•

1 year ago

That still seems strange behavior .... if I am offline, I can "send Later" and it will resend when connected; and I can also append a message to a folder (such as Sent) and have the synchronization occur when I go back online.

Shouldn't failure to send be handled similarly, i.e. yes warn me, but it shouldn't explicitly saving to some specific Local Folder, the default should be to save locally to Sent and synchronize once connectivity is restore.

Generalizing this, I'm often working in low connectivity environments - cafe's, airplanes, developing countries, etc etc, TB does a fairly good job when online, or when offline, it has historically done a poor job of handling things when it thinks it is online but an operation fails (because in reality something in the internet is down)

gene smith

Comment 53

•

1 year ago

Shouldn't failure to send be handled similarly, i.e. yes warn me, but it shouldn't explicitly saving to some specific Local Folder, the default should be to save locally to Sent and synchronize once connectivity is restore.

I think you mean "failure to save to Sent folder". That sounds like a good idea. I'll look to see if something like that is possible.

Mitra Ardron

Comment 54

•

1 year ago

I meant both actually - failure to send should queue for later, and failure to save should append the the box and send later.

gene smith

Comment 55

•

1 year ago

Failure to send results in an error dialog suggesting you make sure your network is good and your SMTP server info is configured correctly. When you click OK on this dialog (the only option) it returns you to the "compose" window. Here you can try to send again or optionally queue to "Send Later". So your suggestion for "failure to send" is already implemented.
But maybe you are suggesting that "failure to send" results in automatic "send later" queuing and that the message be auto-sent when access to SMTP becomes good. This would require periodic retry of the send to SMTP server using the message stored in Local Folders/Outbox.

... failure to save should append the the box and send later.

Just to be, hopefully, clear, there is no attempt to "save to Sent folder" unless the send to SMTP server actually successfully occurs. So there is no reason to "send later" when the save fails.
Maybe you are suggesting that when save to sent there are now 4 options (one new option):

Retry save to Sent Mail folder and Sent Mail imap mailbox
Save to Local Folder
Save only to Sent Mail folder (new)
Don't save at all

So if "Save only to Send Mail folder" is selected, the message would have to be stored to the mbox/maildir offline store file and then imap appended to the Sent Mail mailbox when the imap server becomes accessible. If the user doesn't use offline store, it would have to be kept in a temp file. In either case, the server would have to be "polled" to know when it has become accessible again so the message can be imap appended.

and I can also append a message to a folder (such as Sent) and have the synchronization occur when I go back online.

That doesn't currently always work (especially when offline store is not in use) when the message is to be imap appended which uses a different URL, "appendmessagefromfile" vs. "copyonline" URL when you just copy/move an existing messages within an account. So probably not easy to make what you suggest actually work, but it may be possible (and require more research).

Mitra Ardron

Comment 56

•

1 year ago

Hi Gene - fair points.
A dialogue once makes sense for this kind of issue - however it comes up on every message sent - unless you tell TB its offline, in which case no messages get sent until you remember to manually tell it to go online again. Maybe a checkbox "don't ask again" would be good, as seen on many repetitive dialogues. It could also be don't ask again until its been online and sent all the messages waiting, or until a TB restart (which might not be as good, since I guess many people like me leave TB running all the time, especially given the multi-minute startup times on Macs).

Note that the point about automatic retrying i don't believe is valid, because I'm pretty sure it does this check anyway if there are "Send Later" messages, and then sends them all automatically.

I agree - if the message hasn't been sent it shouldn't be saved in Sent folder, only once a Send occurs.

For the case where sending is successful, but "Save to Sent" failed - which is surprisingly common, I am NOT suggesting two options: "Save to Local Folder" and "Save to Sent", I am suggesting that Save to the local Sent folder (and automatic synchronization) is what you always want. This means that this temporary failure is no different (in final result) from a normally successful "Save to Sent". In fact, I can't see why any of the other options exist, or why the user even needs to know, since this behavior is exactly what happens if I move messages around folders when in a poorly connected environment, i.e. the background synchronization of client and server happens automatically.

You could also go one step further - in a message send there are two potentially length dialogues - the Sending process itself which is reasonable, and the "Save to Sent" which I would suggest does not need to be a dialog, just save locally to the Sent folder and synchronize in background like for all other folders.

I'm not sure what you mean by "when offline store is not in use", I've only ever used TB with full local copies of remote folders, and AFAIK that synchronization process works for all other IMAP folders, or at least should do. Am I understanding you right, that
a: its not the folders that get synchronzied, its the set of imap commands to move messages, and
b: putting a message into the Sent folder - the first time (after a successful send) - is different from moving messages between folders (or deleting messages) which is what other interactions with the Folders do.

gene smith

Comment 57

•

1 year ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "when offline store is not in use"

TB allows you to just let the server do the full messages body storage and TB just stores locally important headers, Subject, Data, Sender etc. The headers are encoded in TB's .msf files. Only if offline store is wanted for a folder is the full message stored in TB's mbox files (E.g., Sent). Of course, the default setup is what you are using where all the folder have offline store, but many users (for example, me) mostly just leave everything on the server and don't store many folders locally in "offline store" mbox (or optionally, maildir) files.

You can set individual folder to have or not have offline store using right-click/properties/synchronization or you can using Settings/Sync & Storage/Message Synchronization to set all folders to have storage or not and then Advanced button to select individual folders.

So it still would be necessary (or at least good) to provide an option to save to Local Folders when the user has no "Sent Mail" mbox file to save the sent message into.

gene smith

Comment 58

•

1 year ago

•

Edited

I'm not exactly sure how this works but I think when you move or copy a message inside the same imap account and you have offline store for the destination folder, TB first copies the message to the destination mbox file and adds the header to the .msf file and tells the server to do an imap copy or imap move. If the imap command succeeds, we are done and the messages in the destination folder does not need to be fetched. (Or maybe the imap copy/move occurs first and the .msf and mbox are not updated unless the imap command succeeds.)

When a message is sent and then saved to Sent, it is just imap appended to the Sent folder using imap append command. It is not also written to mbox or .msf file until the Sent folder is accessed by the user where the header and message body are fetched and stored in .msf and mbox (provided the user has an mbox for Sent folder).

When messages are copied or moved between accounts, the message is obtained from offline store (if present) or fetched from the server. It is then imap appended to the mailbox/folder in the destination account. No imap header and message fetch at destination and write to destination .msf or mbox occurs until the destination folder in the destination account is accessed.

When you do these thing with TB offline (or with a server, imap or smtp, offline) is when it get really complicated and I'm not sure how it really works.

Richard Leger

Comment 59

•

6 days ago

•

Edited

Fyi I experienced sent copy fails issues in TB 144.0b4 (64-bit) with both IMAP Sent folder and Local Folders > Sent (safety net). It could be linked to network issue as I had a bit of latency (100-125ms) and some intermittent packet loss 3-10% that was causing communication delay when issue started to occur.
Basically I sent email, that were delivered fine immediately and I first though copy to Sent folder succeeded as the sent email disappeared on screen. I did so with couple more emails, till I realised I could not find them in Sent in my IMAP account or TB Local Folders. Indeed, there were no longer appearing as an open window in the task bar TB icon... but if I minimised all the opened Windows from TB and other app, the message would appear as still trying to copy email to Sent folder on the IMAP server.
Cancelling this action would then prompt for saving email which if you click Save would store the email in Local Folders > Sent in TB on local computer. But that only worked for a couple of the emails... at some point other email just disappear from the screen without being saved. After which I found them again somewhere behind other windows, in the background, the prompt to save email even further behind! When clicking Save for each of the remaining emails that failed to copy, I was then prompted with a windows, after a while, saying: Copy fails... so they could not even be copied locally on the computer... with only the option to click Cancel.
If I click Cancel I would then return to the compose window of the email, as if it was not sent yet (but it was already with no copy saved locally or in IMAP). I could then re-send them and they would be saved correctly in the IMAP folder.
Obviously there is still something wrong with the way Thunderbird handle network related faults when sending emails and storing them to IMAP Sent folder.

Most recent console errors:

13:50:38.728 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail-2.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
13:50:42.327 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail-3.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
13:50:46.720 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail-1.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
13:50:51.037 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
14:02:02.160
mail.activity: onDownloadCompleted: TypeError: can't access property "activity", this._syncInfoPerFolder.get(...) is undefined autosync.sys.mjs:386:16
    onDownloadCompleted resource:///modules/activity/autosync.sys.mjs:386
    openWindowPrompt resource:///actors/PromptParent.sys.mjs:75
    receiveMessage resource:///actors/PromptParent.sys.mjs:18
    openPrompt resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:1224
    openPromptSync resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:1067
    confirmEx resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:1518
    confirmEx resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:299
    confirmDownloadMessagesForOfflineUse chrome://messenger/content/mail-offline.js:187
    toggleOfflineStatus chrome://messenger/content/mail-offline.js:62
    oncommand chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xhtml:1
14:02:02.163
TypeError: can't access property "activity", this._syncInfoPerFolder.get(...) is undefined
autosync.sys.mjs:377:49
    onDownloadCompleted resource:///modules/activity/autosync.sys.mjs:377
    openWindowPrompt resource:///actors/PromptParent.sys.mjs:75
    receiveMessage resource:///actors/PromptParent.sys.mjs:18
    openPrompt resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:1224
    openPromptSync resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:1067
    confirmEx resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:1518
    confirmEx resource://gre/modules/Prompter.sys.mjs:299
    confirmDownloadMessagesForOfflineUse chrome://messenger/content/mail-offline.js:187
    toggleOfflineStatus chrome://messenger/content/mail-offline.js:62
    oncommand chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xhtml:1
14:05:34.327
TypeError: can't access property "ownerGlobal", navigatedWindow.windowRoot is null
2 FormHandlerChild.sys.mjs:413:31
    notifyProcessRootOfNavigation resource://gre/actors/FormHandlerChild.sys.mjs:413
    onLocationChange resource://gre/actors/FormHandlerChild.sys.mjs:361
    #pushOrReplaceState resource://pdf.js/web/viewer.mjs:5667
    #tryPushCurrentPosition resource://pdf.js/web/viewer.mjs:5686
    #pageHide resource://pdf.js/web/viewer.mjs:5839
    closeTab chrome://messenger/content/tabmail.js:1128
    removeTabByNode chrome://messenger/content/tabmail.js:1146
    connectedCallback chrome://messenger/content/tabmail-tab.js:99

gene smith

Comment 60

•

6 days ago

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #59)
I didn't try to simulate a network error but having a bad password stored in tb for the account holding the Sent folder may be similar. So I set my Sent folder to another account's Sent folder and modified that account's password in Password Mgr with one char missing.

When I send a message with this setup, the compose window stays active with the send progress window on top of it. Then a window pops up to enter the correct password. The password prompt covers up the send progress window completely, so it appear to be gone. But dragging the password prompt away reveals it again. While the password prompt and send progress are present, the compose window is still there and gray. I can retry the password and the pwd prompt comes back shortly. If I cancel the password prompt, I get another prompt to save to Local Folders and the save occurs if I select it. I can also retry and start the cycle over again and the compose window remains there and gray until the save to sent succeeds or is completely cancel. So don't see a problem with this test.

I also tried just setting the Sent account server URL wrong (correct: localhost, wrong: localhostt) and kept the password good. I see basically the same thing except no password prompt since since imap can't make network connection to "localhostt". The compose window remains in place and gray until the message is saved to Local Folders or until I cancel the save. Also, the prompt to save to Local Folders covers up the Sent progress.

Fyi I experienced sent copy fails issues in TB 144.0b4 (64-bit) with both IMAP Sent folder and Local Folders > Sent (safety net).

I assume you are configured to just save sent to Sent folder on the same imap account. You are not configured to save sent mail to Local Folders as a "safety net".

It could be linked to network issue as I had a bit of latency (100-125ms) and some intermittent packet loss 3-10% that was causing communication delay when issue started to occur.

In the past I have tested this with a intermittent network, weak wi-fi, wi-fi out of range, super-slow network and by blocking ports on firewall and thought I had this pretty bullet proof.

Basically I sent email, that were delivered fine immediately and I first though copy to Sent folder succeeded as the sent email disappeared on screen. I did so with couple more emails, till I realised I could not find them in Sent in my IMAP account or TB Local Folders.

So you compose a message in its own window and sent it and the compose window completely went away. Did you see any send "progress" window with bar graph indicating progress? The compose window should not vanish until the sent message is saved somewhere (unless you explicitly indicate in the prompt not to save it).

Indeed, there were no longer appearing as an open window in the task bar TB icon... but if I minimised all the opened Windows from TB and other app, the message would appear as still trying to copy email to Sent folder on the IMAP server.

Are you saying you found the send "progress" window under other windows? Did you also find the original compose window (should be gray) hidden there too?

Cancelling this action would then prompt for saving email which if you click Save would store the email in Local Folders > Sent in TB on local computer.

Ok, so you canceled the stuck send "progress" and you then saw the prompt to save to Local Folders and this worked. I assume it also closed the "gray" compose window which was actually still there.

But that only worked for a couple of the emails... at some point other email just disappear from the screen without being saved.

So for other emails, the save to Local Folders was prompted but it didn't work and the emails were lost. About how many emails were in this state. Maybe three or more? I tried it with two queued up (due to the bad password test) and they both saved.

After which I found them again somewhere behind other windows, in the background, the prompt to save email even further behind! When clicking Save for each of the remaining emails that failed to copy, I was then prompted with a windows, after a while, saying: Copy fails... so they could not even be copied locally on the computer... with only the option to click Cancel.

Not sure which prompt(s) you are referring to here. Just to be clear, you didn't do a retry on the Send, you only did attempts to save to Local Folders and several of these didn't work at all?

If I click Cancel I would then return to the compose window of the email, as if it was not sent yet (but it was already with no copy saved locally or in IMAP). I could then re-send them and they would be saved correctly in the IMAP folder.

Ok, you did retry the smtp send again and this time it saved to imap Sent folder OK. And it sounds like your compose window(s) must of still been there and never disappear actually.

Obviously there is still something wrong with the way Thunderbird handle network related faults when sending emails and storing them to IMAP Sent folder.

I'll test it again with more than 2 sent messages not saved. Maybe that's the primary problem here.
Also not understand why your compose window goes away (or maybe gets moved under other windows and hidden) before the sent message is saved somewhere.

Most recent console errors:

Not seeing anything here that I'm familiar with.

gene smith

Comment 61

•

5 days ago

I'm not really seeing any problem with 4 emails composed and sent when saving to Local Folders with network problems connecting to imap Sent. The only somewhat confusing thing is when you click send on them all with an imap network problem present, you only see one "save to local folders" dialog popup on top of a single send progress dialog and this may take a while to appear when tb is waiting for network timeout. When you click "save" it only saves to local folders a single message and it might not be the one it is initially on top of (focus switches to the correct compose window when you click the "save to locals" dialog). The other 3 message remain present with their send progress dialog waiting. If they are all sent and waiting, the only option is to click "cancel" or close the dialog. Then you get a single "save to local folders" dialog which again just allows the save to Local Folders for one of the remaining waiting compose windows. So you have to click "cancel" or close any remaining progress dialogs to see the "save to local folders" dialog for the message. If you do this, they all get saved to Local Folders. Anyhow, I haven't seen a case where they didn't while testing this today.

So when sending an email the procedure should be to watch the compose window. Typically it should just go away and you may not notice or see the "progress" dialog popup since the send and save to Sent is so fast. If the message is sent OK via SMTP and send is slow or there is a problem saving to Sent folder, the progress dialog will stick around until tb gets a signal that save to sent has succeeded or failed. When it fails (which may be instant or take a while when waiting for a timeout) you should then see a single "save to local folders" dialog on top of the progress dialog. If you don't see the "save to local folders" dialog in a reasonable time, you can always click "cancel" on progress dialog or close the progress dialog which will force the "save to local folders" dialog to appear. Then when you see the "save to local folders" dialog, you can click "save" (which should do the save to LFs), or retry the normal save to Sent or just cancel the save completely. Except for "retry" this should cause the compose window, the progress dialog and the "save to local folders" dialog to go away.

Richard Leger

Comment 62

•

5 days ago

(In reply to gene smith from comment #60)

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #59)

Fyi I experienced sent copy fails issues in TB 144.0b4 (64-bit) with both IMAP Sent folder and Local Folders > Sent (safety net).
I assume you are configured to just save sent to Sent folder on the same imap account. You are not configured to save sent mail to Local Folders as a "safety net".

Yes. TB is configured to keep copy of sent items into my Sent folder on IMAP server and it works most of the time except yesterday in a very awkward way as described in my previous comment.

It could be linked to network issue as I had a bit of latency (100-125ms) and some intermittent packet loss 3-10% that was causing communication delay when issue started to occur.
In the past I have tested this with a intermittent network, weak wi-fi, wi-fi out of range, super-slow network and by blocking ports on firewall and thought I had this pretty bullet proof.

Could it be a problem of windows focus? I mean apparently Thunderbird was prompting for user action, but delay in doing so seems to have cause issues. I do tend to have more of those focus issue with recent version of Thunderbird, there are quite random though.

Basically I sent email, that were delivered fine immediately and I first though copy to Sent folder succeeded as the sent email disappeared on screen. I did so with couple more emails, till I realised I could not find them in Sent in my IMAP account or TB Local Folders.
So you compose a message in its own window and sent it and the compose window completely went away. Did you see any send "progress" window with bar graph indicating progress?

Well after clicking Send button, the message appeared to have been sent, it was very small in size so was almost instant... did not see a progress bar. The message compose windows simply disappeared so I thought the all process Send + Save worked as usual. Message were received by recipients.
But it did not successfully saved a copy of the message and the compose windows with progress and prompt disappeared from focus while the progress bar to copy item to sent folder on IMAP was opened. The windows was no longer available when mousing over the Thunderbird icon which appeared as one single icon in the taskbar which is the case when message is sent properly. I could not longer access the message windows. Thunderbird does not have a Windows menu entry allow to access all the opened windows in the application so I could not reach them that way either.

I only noticed it when trying to minimise multiple opened windows to discover that my message was there, still trying to be copied to sent... but the prompt to retry the saving was not visible either, till I minimised multiple other windows, including other messages that TB was also trying to still copy to send folder. I did not click Retry, I just clicked Save in the first prompt, then other prompt started to show up but not all in the front focus and not all properly saving email in Local Folders when clicking the Save button.

Indeed, there were no longer appearing as an open window in the task bar TB icon... but if I minimised all the opened Windows from TB and other app, the message would appear as still trying to copy email to Sent folder on the IMAP server.
Are you saying you found the send "progress" window under other windows? Did you also find the original compose window (should be gray) hidden there too?

After clicking Send, the compose windows disappeared and message appeared Send (and saved) but it just moved in the background (lost focus) with the save copy to sent folder progress opened over it... but the prompt windows (to Retry/Save) was hidden further down the ladder, not visible nor in focus... It could have been because I keep sending message that could not be copied to server creating additional windows on the top of each other. But none of those window were accessible from the task bar. I had to minimise a lot of other windows to find them by chance!

Cancelling this action would then prompt for saving email which if you click Save would store the email in Local Folders > Sent in TB on local computer.
Ok, so you canceled the stuck send "progress" and you then saw the prompt to save to Local Folders and this worked. I assume it also closed the "gray" compose window which was actually still there.

At first I pressed the Save button in the Retry/Save prompt windows but for some of the email it failed, showing a "progress" or "alert" windows "Copy to sent failed" or something like that.

I am wondering if that is because to much time past between the Send action and me discovering the issue and maybe the local cache copied of email had already been deleted after being sent, so they could not longer be copied locally?

The console did shows the following errors:

13:50:38.728 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail-2.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
13:50:42.327 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail-3.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
13:50:46.720 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail-1.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
13:50:51.037 NotFoundError: Could not open `C:\Users\richard\AppData\Local\Temp\nsemail.eml': file does not exist (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)

But that only worked for a couple of the emails... at some point other email just disappear from the screen without being saved.
So for other emails, the save to Local Folders was prompted but it didn't work

Yes save to Local Folders failed for about 4 or my 6 messages. That seem to correlate with the console errors above.

and the emails were lost.

No, because like or other email, they looked like they disappeared from screen and look lost, but indeed they went in the background, focus wise, so minimising windows again allowed me to access some of them, and see that the alert "Copy to sent fails" after which I could click Cancel and I was back in the compose windows of the message that copy failed able to edit it again and press Send again. Which successfully (re)Send and Save items in the Sent IMAP folder this time. About how many emails were in this state.

Maybe three or more? I tried it with two queued up (due to the bad password test) and they both saved.

In total I had about 6 emails sent in that state, which only two successfully saved to Local Folders (the two most recent one, last sent I think but I cannot know for sure).

For the other, "Copy to sent fails" and back to compose window. So in the end I did not lost the data, but I could have if I had exited Thunderbird or force quit it. Hopefully it may have shown the prompt in the background by then, preventing data loss, but because I hadn't tried, I could not know.

After which I found them again somewhere behind other windows, in the background, the prompt to save email even further behind! When clicking Save for each of the remaining emails that failed to copy, I was then prompted with a windows, after a while, saying: Copy fails... so they could not even be copied locally on the computer... with only the option to click Cancel.
Not sure which prompt(s) you are referring to here. Just to be clear, you didn't do a retry on the Send, you only did attempts to save to Local Folders and several of these didn't work at all?

When you send a message:

You have the sent progress bar
Then the copy message to Sent progress bar
If that fails you are prompted to Retry or Save
When I clicked Save message two message were saved in Local Folders > Sent
But as it fails for about 4 msg, for those another progress/alert prompt windows appear saying "Copy to sent fails" (or something like that) and you can only press Cancel
After which I was back in the compose windows of the message for which copy failed. Able to Edit it, Send it again... which I did and save worked that time directly into the Sent IMAP folder (I think I did changed network by that time which may explain why it worked). I am also using a VPN but that has not been an issue for TB for quite some time now. I think the issue was more linked to the focus of the windows and prompt asking end-user to retry save copy to the server first... as it was hidden, out of focus and not reachable from the task bar, it was missed causing more problem down the line.

If I click Cancel I would then return to the compose window of the email, as if it was not sent yet (but it was already with no copy saved locally or in IMAP). I could then re-send them and they would be saved correctly in the IMAP folder.
Ok, you did retry the smtp send again and this time it saved to imap Sent folder OK. And it sounds like your compose window(s) must of still been there and never disappear actually.

Yes. That worked as the compose windows was always there in the end, just not in focus and not accessible via the taskbar TB icon.

Obviously there is still something wrong with the way Thunderbird handle network related faults when sending emails and storing them to IMAP Sent folder.
I'll test it again with more than 2 sent messages not saved. Maybe that's the primary problem here.

And wait, maybe couple of hours after sending messages see what happens then... before pressing Save to save to Local Folders...

Also not understand why your compose window goes away (or maybe gets moved under other windows and hidden) before the sent message is saved somewhere.

I did notice focus issue with Thunderbird lately... but can't really pinpoint them.
Also wondering if it is not an issue with Windows 11 Pro itself following updates applied at some point?
I also have Firefox running, so could that interfere with the Thunderbird focus?

Richard Leger

Comment 63

•

5 days ago

(In reply to gene smith from comment #61)

I'm not really seeing any problem with 4 emails composed and sent when saving to Local Folders with network problems connecting to imap Sent. The only somewhat confusing thing is when you click send on them all with an imap network problem present, you only see one "save to local folders" dialog popup on top of a single send progress dialog and this may take a while to appear when tb is waiting for network timeout.

In my recent case, I don't think the problem is with the save process itself, it is more that the progress and prompt upon failing were in the background out of focus and no longer visible/reachable from the taskbar after sending the message and were simply not seen, reachable by end-user to proceed action accordingly: Retry (Save to Sent on IMAP server) or Save (in Local Folders).

While I could see my recipients received the message (they replied to me), I discovered later on that messages were missing in my Sent folders (both IMAP and Local Folders) that is were I started to investigate, and by chance (minimising windows manually one after another) I discovered message compose windows were still trying to be copied to the sent folder.

None of the prompt or compose windows remain in focus during the process... is it because it took too long for Thunderbird to react after sending to the fact that it copy to sent was failing (timing out) and I was already back working in Thunderbird by then, so when Thunderbird tried to prompt me, the windows and prompt did not come on top front focus? And only one prompt appears at a time, blocking any other prompt to shows up till user action is taken on the previous prompt.

Apart of that the save process works. I think the failed copy to Local folders was due to too long delay between "send + copy fails + prompt" and user interaction (Retry/Save) during which the local cached copy of email sent were deleted and no longer available to copy locally in TB Local Folders.

In any case the lost of windows focus (disappearing/missing from taskbar after sent), the prompt for user interaction not on primary focus (on top of all Thunderbird windows) when appearing is the primary caused the over all issue here it seems.
The local cache copy of sent emails shall not be deleted prior a copy to sent folder has succeeded though, but that is a secondary issue.

gene smith

Comment 64

•

5 days ago

Richard, Thanks for the details!

The console did shows the following errors:
....

I'll bet you're right. Those files probably contained the messages that never got saved to imap Sent or LF Sent. I've never looked into how these file come about since it always seemed to "just work". Maybe somehow after a time period they get deleted and in my test I need to wait longer (as you suggested).

A thing I'm not sure about is you said you (re-?)sent a couple emails much later and they saved to imap Sent OK. Do you know if these were actually sent successfully before and if the recipient received two copies?

But as it fails for about 4 msg, for those another progress/alert prompt windows appear saying "Copy to sent fails" (or something like that) and you can only press Cancel

I'll try to find what error is posted when copy to sent fails due to temp file missing. Maybe that's is happening because the temp file holding the messages has been deleted for some reason. I guess if the temp file is gone the only option is to go back to the still present "compose" window and let you copy/paste the content or just try to send it again, or just "Cancel" as you mention.

I'm looking at the problem with linux/kde and don't see the compose, progress or "save to LF" windows getting hidden under other windows. Also when I have 4 msgs still waiting to be saved to Sent, I can use ctrl-tab to see all the open windows (don't use task bar much). The still present compose windows are marked with a "pencil" icon and others, including pop-ups, with normal tb icon. (For ctrl-tab I'm setup to show just a compact list of window titles with small icons, I've tried to set ctrl-tab up in win10/11 with a compact list and don't think it is there by default anymore, just huge icons.)

Mitra Ardron

Comment 65

•

5 days ago

The two key problems are still there.

1: even if your connection improves, "Try Again" never works (in my experience).
2: While TB is perfectly capable of putting something in a folder (e.g. a "Sent" folder) and synchronizing when a good connection is established, the send process doesn't use that mechanism, instead it gives you a warning.

IMHO - the save (whether to Imap folder or local) shouldn't use IMAP directly, it should append to the mirrored (or local) Send folder, and then synchronize when connection is good (which might be immediately). ie. it should work exactly as if I'd dragged a message into the Mirrored Send folder.

This bug is 18 years old so I don't expect it to get fixed ! But just in case ....

gene smith

Comment 66

•

5 days ago

Richard,
Ok, I was able to see a problem similar to what you describe. I had the destination server for my sent message set with a bad password stored in password mgr so save to imap Sent will fail. Then I wrote and sent 6 simple emails that all sent OK but failed at save to Sent step. In /tmp I see 6 newly created files nsemail.eml, nsemail-1.eml, ... nsemail-5 containing the full message header/body. I left tb in this state for several hours and the files remained. Except for the first message sent, which automatically showed the "save to local folders" dialog, they showed just the "send progress" dialog with a cancel button. I selected these message randomly and, after canceling the "progress" dialog, clicked "save" on the "save to local folders" dialog. Each message saved to LFs as it should until I got to the last one. The last remaining one only showed the "compose" window and there were no other dialogs present. So this last one couldn't be saved to local folders and the only option was to close it or send the message again (but that message was already properly sent and received). This got rid of all the tmp/nsemail*.eml files but now there is instead a single nscopy-1.tmp file (newly created) containing what looks like the top 3 lines of an mbox file:

From - Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:23:49 GMT
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000

Richard Leger

Comment 67

•

4 days ago

It happened to me again just now... immediately after sending this time, I was prompted to Retry saving to Sent on IMAP server, I pressed Retry a couple of time, and it kept failing. I then press Save an I was back in the message compose window with "Copy failed." appearing in the bottom left corner of the status bar of the compose window.

In error console the following error appeared if that can be of help?

16:47:05.277 TypeError: can't access property "path", this._messageFile is nullMessageSend.sys.mjs:921:26

Also noted that unless you minimise windows you cannot access the message compose window which is in "Copy failed." status after Save.

I re-send the message as is after a few minutes and it worked fine Send + Save in Sent IMAP folder.

Richard Leger

Comment 68

•

4 days ago

(In reply to gene smith from comment #64)

A thing I'm not sure about is you said you (re-?)sent a couple emails much later and they saved to imap Sent OK. Do you know if these were actually sent successfully before and if the recipient received two copies?

Yes the two copies were received by recipient. The original message sent that failed to copy (in either Sent on the IMAP server or Local Folders), and the second copy re-send as is after the original copy failed.

I'm looking at the problem with linux/kde and don't see the compose, progress or "save to LF" windows getting hidden under other windows. Also when I have 4 msgs still waiting to be saved to Sent, I can use ctrl-tab to see all the open windows (don't use task bar much).

On windows I could not use ALT+TAB to access the message in failed copy status. They were just no listed, like in the taskbar icon. Only accessible by minimising the opened windows. Same today when issue occurred.

gene smith

Comment 69

•

3 days ago

Re. comment 67:

It happened to me again just now..

It appears this time you only had this single message in the "sending" state (not like before where you had several backed up and waiting to be sent).

Anyhow, I've tried to duplicate closer to what you see by now setting my local firewall to reject outgoing connection attempts to imaps port 993 so imap Sent folder can't be written to. But I don't see a problem. I can hit "retry" lots of times and then "save" and the save into Local Folders occurs fine.

It appears that somehow for you your this._messageFile is null when an attempt is made to create a new file to copy to Local Folders having the 3 special "mbox only" header lines (shown in comment 66) followed by the actual message that was sent in this._messageFile:
https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/11fe5b6d9c29b0e806fd82108466b4107ae1c581/mailnews/compose/src/MessageSend.sys.mjs#899
This is causing the error you posted in comment 67.

I haven't been able to produce a situation where _messageFile is null, even when I have 7 messages sent and waiting to save to Sent with the port 993 blocked. _messageFile has to be correct at some point during the send because it points to the actual message sent via SMTP (which occurs OK). Once it's set, the only place I see it getting set null is in _cleanup():
https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/11fe5b6d9c29b0e806fd82108466b4107ae1c581/mailnews/compose/src/MessageSend.sys.mjs#1121
which only occurs after the message is sent via SMTP and saved to Sent file so that the temp files are no longer needed.

FWIW, in my failure case in comment 66, it appears the _messageFile was not null but the file it points to was empty or maybe deleted somehow so the resulting temp file only contained the 3 lines. But I haven't been able to duplicate this either since that one time.

On windows I could not use ALT+TAB to access the message in failed copy status. They were just no listed, like in the taskbar icon. Only accessible by minimising the opened windows. Same today when issue occurred.

On linux, I'm not seeing any problem accessing waiting to save windows or dialogs when I have only sent one messages (everything is on top and alt-tab/task bar access not needed). But it does get more confusing when I have several (e.g., 7) messages waiting to be saved to Sent. At one point I think I had one window that seemed like I couldn't get to but I eventually did using alt-tab and/or task bar, but don't remember the details.

gene smith

Comment 70

•

3 days ago

I do know of one situation where the temp files can get deleted. Say you send a message and there is a problem saving to Sent and you are waiting at the prompt as to what to do: save, retry or cancel. Then you start up on the same computer another TB instance on a different profile. The tb related temp files are ALL deleted on tb startup, so the original tb instance will have problems saving to Sent since its temp files are gone. However, this won't set _messageFile null like you see in comment 67 so I'm sure you didn't do this.

Richard Leger

Comment 71

•

1 day ago

•

Edited

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #68)

(In reply to gene smith from comment #64)

I'm looking at the problem with linux/kde and don't see the compose, progress or "save to LF" windows getting hidden under other windows. Also when I have 4 msgs still waiting to be saved to Sent, I can use ctrl-tab to see all the open windows (don't use task bar much).
On windows I could not use ALT+TAB to access the message in failed copy status. They were just no listed, like in the taskbar icon. Only accessible by minimising the opened windows. Same today when issue occurred.

I just noticed the following which may be linked to the compose window disappearance.
https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/beta/T4f241a58fb5cfe5d/compose-window-entries-disappear-from-taskbar-on-draft-save
That particular issue may have been fixed in Bug 1994411. To be confirmed.

So that leave the copy fail issue to resolve :-)

gene smith

Comment 72

•

1 day ago

So that leave the copy fail issue to resolve :-)

I haven't found a way to cause save to Sent problem to happen reliably. I saw something weird once (comment 66) but after many more attempts, it has worked with no glitches (on linux). Maybe it's a windows only problem or maybe (just hoping) that patch for Bug 1994411 fixes it for you.
FWIW, the mostly JS code that handles save to Sent problem looks OK to me and appears OS independent.

Richard Leger

Comment 73

•

11 hours ago

•

Edited

(In reply to gene smith from comment #72)

maybe (just hoping) that patch for Bug 1994411 fixes it for you.

I don't think that will fix the save to Sent issue which I believe is a separate issue.

I agree with you it is very random. I cannot reproduce it at will either at my end.

What puzzles me is that if you Retry after the copy fails and return to Compose Windows, it then just works fine.

In my last occurrence it also happened immediately after sending, so the cache version of my message was either deleted or corrupted just after sending that it could not longer be saved, copy fails neither in IMAP nor Local Folders... or just after trying to copy to the IMAP Sent folder which failed prompting for Retry and the message was deleted then?

Could it be linked to a some sort of time out on the IMAP connection? So error suggest that the cached version of the email on the local computer cannot be found (or is corrupted) some how.

Or could it be linked to Bug 1924291 or its fix, that may potentially affect Bug 1991497 and this one?

Fyi, I only keep local cache copy of email in my Inbox for 3 days only. "Select this folder for offline use" is disabled on my Sent IMAP folder. Though that should not affect the capacity of TB to save message in Local Folders. I just thought to mention it if that makes any difference.