Closed Bug 468248 Opened 16 years ago Closed 15 years ago

Thunderbird 3 deleted my INBOX

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

x86
Windows Vista
defect
Not set
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: baffoni, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: dataloss)

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081204 Shredder/3.0b2pre

I was using my TB3 build this morning, and all of a sudden all of my emails in the INBOX disappeared and it told me it was modifying my mail filters.  Idiot that I am, I forgot to grab the info from the error console before restarting.  When restarting, the Tbird process wouldn't shutdown normally and required a process end.  BTW, why did we change the error console so we can't do a multiple select of more than one error?  That make it difficult to grab pages of errors that dump in there....

Checking on the server, they must have been deleted and purged (not moved to Trash, setting to mark delete and reviewing the folder didn't show the messages marked deleted, etc.).  There was no new folder containing the messages, everything was just poof gone.  The messages were there for only a few minutes before the server did a cleanup and removed them.
Is your profile still around? Your e-mails should still be there. What did you do to cause this? You can read  http://new.quality.mozilla.org/bug-writing-guidelines and report back with your results.
Sorry for doing such a crappy bug report, this bug surprised me.

I'm running Tbird3b1 for an IMAP4 email account, connected to Netscape server email.  You are right, I have the offline copy of the emails, I just need to blow away the index and let it rebuild in a local folder (and spend a week or two culling out the already deleted emails).

Nothing that I can think of prompted the deletion event.  I think I was reading through my emails, I may have been waiting for a delete to finish in the background, but I was definitely reading an email when they all disappeared.

I have not had a reoccurrence, so I don't know what good it would do to run in safe mode, etc. per guidelines.  In fact, because it happened only the once, I'm loathe to mark this new until I or someone else see this again.
Whiteboard: DUPEME
Removing "dupeme" as I don't think this is bug 466311.

> told me it was modifying my mail filters

What did it say?
Whiteboard: DUPEME
The Inbox folder disappeared, then a dialog box came up saying that it was disabling the message filters that were pointing to the folder, I think.  Unfortunately I was so flustered at potentially losing all of my inbox, I didn't think too clearly, and I didn't track the error messages correctly.
OK, it just happened again, and I got this from the mail server:  

Protocol Information: Baffoni renamed mbox INBOX to {subfolder}/INBOX 

So it thought that I did a move of the whole inbox, however I was just listening to a voice call, reading email, and writing on a new message; this happened in the back ground.  I am sure this was not an unintentional move of the folder.  Also, unlike a test I did later where I did a move of the folder (shift drag) to a subfolder, this rename did NOT show the folder name in the new location, I had to subscribe the folder in the new location to see it.

So something in my client is automatically moving my inbox to some subfolder.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Looking in the error console, I see a bunch of these:

Error: Components is not defined
Source File: chrome://messenger/content/folderWidgets.xml
Line: 152

However, since there is no timestamp, I don't know if this happened after or hours before the move.
Michael, is this related to your bug 466311, or bug 466261?  (I didn't read it - so this is just a reference)

sounds like imap or backend.

(sure would be nice to get that timestamped console in for Thunderbird 3)
Component: General → Backend
Product: Thunderbird → MailNews Core
QA Contact: general → backend
I don't know of any code that would move folders in the background - it sounds like an accidental drag drop, as unlikely as that sounds.
Actually, this is exactly what happened.  I don't know how that happened other than as a bug in the software (if not, the fact that INBOX _can_ be moved sounds like a bug to me), but I eventually found it 3 levels below the top level.  I wish I had found this out before I spent all that time recovering the folder....;-/  

With that in mind, do you want this bug marked WFM?  Is this a duplicate of other unintentional moves?  Renamed to be the need to prevent INBOX from being moved (I haven't actually tested whether I can do this intentionally or not - I have too many messages to lose to mess with this).
D'n'd of the inbox was actually possible for a while, but not anymore since bug 465015.

Let's call this WFM then. Reopen (or file a new bug) if you have more info that can pin down the problem.

->WFM
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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