84952 - Change local mail directory and old messages do not appear

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 81355

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Account Configuration, defect)

Description

[Jon Hall]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.1) Gecko/20010607
BuildID:    2001060703

When I changed the folder that Mozilla downloaded email into, and tried to
download mail. It told me that it wa unable to write to the new folder. Note I
did not create the folder though, so this would be kind of expected. However
once I did create the folder, the mail that was downloaded into the default mail
folder before I changed the folder was not imported into the new folder. I'm
guessing the email was orphaned...I could not check since I did a torture test
and downloaded 2000+ email messages at once. This should be handled like
Outlook. Once the folder is changed you are notified that the mail will be moved
over to the new folder when Mail is restarted or even right away.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Download some email
2.Edit Local Directory to any folder other than default.
3.Download email again.
4. The email from the first download is still in the default folder.

Actual Results:  The email from the first download is still in the default folder.

Expected Results:  Moved the email from the old folder into the new one

Comment 1

[Ninoschka Baca]

Adding jglick to Cc: list to verify how this should work.

In 4.7 you must manually create the new local directory but once it is changed 
in Preferences, a message appears stating "Your new mail directory preferences 
will take effect the next time you restart Communicator". After an exit/restart, 
the messages are copied from the old directory into the new directory so all 
messages appear (old and new).

In Mozilla you must also manually create a new local directory but there is no 
message stating that any action will occur (copy or move). After an exit/restart 
the mail messages remain in the old directory structure so the Inbox appears 
blank although new messages appear.

Expected Behavior: It should behave similar to the 4.7 implementation.

Comment 2

[Ninoschka Baca]

Changing summary from "unable to download mail of folder changed" to "Change 
local mail directory and old messages do not appear". 

Comment 3

[racham]

Changing the summary as suggested by Ninoschka (it was accidentally placed in
Status whiteboad field before). Adding Jennifer to the cc list.

Comment 4

[jglick]

The 4.x behavior as described by nbaca seems appropriate:

Manually create the new local directory
Once it is changed in Preferences, a message appears stating "Your new mail 
directory setting will take effect the next time you restart <productname>". 
After an exit/restart, the messages are copied from the old directory into the 
new directory so all messages appear (old and new).

Comment 5

[Göran Schmidt]

I just want to say, please don't let mozilla migrate the mails automatically
into the new folder!I've got several mail-folders and changed round under ns 4.6
very often. So please let mozilla do this automation just after request.
Full-automation isn't always the key to comfort :-)

(okay, this is no bug-comment, but you started the suggestions :-))

Comment 6

[Joe Infla]

*** Bug 187438 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Joe Infla]

From investigating Bug 187438, I see the following behavior:

1) On an existing POP account, change local directory.
2) Notice: MailNews window is not updated.  Old messages are still visible in
message list, and the message previously displayed in the message pane is still
viewable.
3) Opening any messages visible in the message list brings up a blank window
with just the titlebar.  This includes messages downloaded after the local
directory change.
4) Restarting Mozilla restores normal behavior, but cuts off access to messages
that were available in the folder before the directory change.  Old messages
still exist in the old directory on disk.

Adding dataloss keyword, because this effectively loses messages for people who
don't know how to poke around through their profile directory.

Comment 8

[Brant Gurganus]

By the definitions on <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/bug_status.html#severity> and
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided>, crashing and dataloss
bugs are of critical or possibly higher severity.  Only changing open bugs to
minimize unnecessary spam.  Keywords to trigger this would be crash, topcrash,
topcrash+, zt4newcrash, dataloss.

Comment 9

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

mass re-assign.

Comment 10

[Max Spicer]

This is a duplicate.  The steps to reproduce and expected behaviour describe the
same problem as 81355.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 81355 ***