This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Hebrew folder names recognized as invalid

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by yosefm

yosefm
yosefm
more options

So I've migrated my father's thundirbird to a new computer (from win7 to win10 fwiw). I did the usual path of letting thunderbird create a profile and then copy into it the existing profile's content like I always do for him. It seems like the existing mail is found as intended - for english-named folders.

For hebrew folders, the folder name is shown but nothing in or under it. Looking in the Win Explorer, a directory called something like d008c... is created alongside the existing directories. I understand this is what Thunderbird names directories with illegal charachters, but I fail to understand why the Hebrew names would be treated as illegal. It was never a problem before, on the old computer or its predecessors.

I tried closing and deleting msf files, all of them in the entire mail hierarchy. No joy. What am I doing wrong and what might I do to fix this?

Thanks in advance.

So I've migrated my father's thundirbird to a new computer (from win7 to win10 fwiw). I did the usual path of letting thunderbird create a profile and then copy into it the existing profile's content like I always do for him. It seems like the existing mail is found as intended - for english-named folders. For hebrew folders, the folder name is shown but nothing in or under it. Looking in the Win Explorer, a directory called something like d008c... is created alongside the existing directories. I understand this is what Thunderbird names directories with illegal charachters, but I fail to understand why the Hebrew names would be treated as illegal. It was never a problem before, on the old computer or its predecessors. I tried closing and deleting msf files, all of them in the entire mail hierarchy. No joy. What am I doing wrong and what might I do to fix this? Thanks in advance.

All Replies (7)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options
Looking in the Win Explorer, a directory called something like d008c... is created alongside the existing directories.

Sounds to me like the folder names were already screwed upon being copied over to the new computer. Make sure they will be retained by the copy process.

yosefm
yosefm Question owner
more options

The folder names are the same on both computers before running Thunderbird. The copy was done over the network (Windows file sharing). Only after running TB, the new mangled names appear alongside. The copy process looks fine. Is there a way for the copy process to create the same names but in an encoding not recognized by TB or some black magic like that?

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

I assume you have the BiDi add-on installed. just make sure it is functioning. I really do not know what it does. But it might be relevant.

Does the windows 10 machine have a Hebrew character sat to run with? Is the version of Thunderbird the same?

yosefm
yosefm Question owner
more options

Matt said

I assume you have the BiDi add-on installed. just make sure it is functioning. I really do not know what it does. But it might be relevant. Does the windows 10 machine have a Hebrew character sat to run with? Is the version of Thunderbird the same?

Version is the same, and Windows works with Unicode so it shouldn't be a problem (Hebrew language pack is installed for windows and for Thunderbird, to be sure - I don't know what other things might be installed on top of that to get more Hebrew supprt).

The origin computer has BiDi Mail UI. I don't think having it or not ever affected the ability to read directories, but I'll try just in case.

yosefm
yosefm Question owner
more options

I mean, I've read through the BiDiMailUi code and nothing there touches the reading of mail directories AFAICT.

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Lets try an old version of Thunderbird and see if that is the issue. http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/38.8.0/win32/he/

yosefm
yosefm Question owner
more options

Hi again. I only now had a chance to try this and I'm sorry to report that the older version you linked also doesn't work. What else can I do to diagnose the problem?