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.

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

Tab shows wrong content

  • 15 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 27 views
  • Last reply by jschrempp

more options

I'm running Thunderbird 24.6.0 on OS X 10.9.3

I will open several email messages in tabs. I close one tab by clicking the x and the next tab will reveal, as expected.

Sometimes, not always, the newly revealed tab will have the correct subject at the top, but the wrong email text displayed. I believe - but am not certain - that it is always the contents of the email from the just closed tab. It's as if the newly revealed tab is using the display window of the just closed tab without refreshing the contents.

At this point if I click on other open tabs they also keep displaying the same text instead of displaying the correct text for the message the correspond to.

The wrong contents remains even if I can minimize Thunderbird to the menu bar and bring it back. If I close all tabs and then open some messages the tabs seem to work fine again.

Jim

I'm running Thunderbird 24.6.0 on OS X 10.9.3 I will open several email messages in tabs. I close one tab by clicking the x and the next tab will reveal, as expected. Sometimes, not always, the newly revealed tab will have the correct subject at the top, but the wrong email text displayed. I believe - but am not certain - that it is always the contents of the email from the just closed tab. It's as if the newly revealed tab is using the display window of the just closed tab without refreshing the contents. At this point if I click on other open tabs they also keep displaying the same text instead of displaying the correct text for the message the correspond to. The wrong contents remains even if I can minimize Thunderbird to the menu bar and bring it back. If I close all tabs and then open some messages the tabs seem to work fine again. Jim

All Replies (15)

more options

Close your tabs, right click the problem folder and select Properties. Then Repair Folder.

Be prepared to lose some messages if the corruption is too bad.

Read this article about maintaining your folders to prevent this in the future. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_-_Thunderbird

more options

Thanks for the hint Airmail.

Is the suspect corrupt folder the one that contains the message of the tab I closed, or the folder containing the message in the tab that is revealed showing the wrong email?

Is Repair Folder recursive to all sub folders?

Jim

more options

A tab is not a folder. If you are reading messages in your Inbox then that is the folder.

Repair is only on the folder you right click.

more options

The folder would be the inbox, or wherever you have new messages set up to go from there.

more options

I'm sorry I'm not being clear.

The messages in the open tabs might be from several different folders.

I close one tab and another is revealed with incorrect content - I believe it shows the content of the tab I just closed. I close that tab to reveal another and that revealed tab also has the incorrect content shown.

Is the suspect folder the one containing the message I closed or the ones containing the messages showing the incorrect content?

Jim

more options

Try restarting with add-ons disabled from the help menu.

I think your assumption that the same tab is being reused without a refresh is a valid assumption (particularly as Thunderbird actually only has one tab and it is reused). But as this is the only report I have seen, I am more inclined to blame an add-on or a theme or a combination of them that is perhaps unique to you.

more options

Hi Matt,

Thanks very much for the reply. The problem is very intermittent, so I'm not sure how long I'd have to run with add ons disabled before I could know to blame one of them. For the record, these are the add-ons that show up in my Add-ons Manager tab:

Adblock Plus 2.6.3 Edit email subject 2.0.3 Google Contacts 0.7.12 Image Zoom 0.6.3 ImportExportTools 2.8.0.4 Lightning 2.6.5 PrintingTools 1.2.4.1 Send Later 4.2.4 Extra Folder Columns 1.1.5 (disabled)


Appearance is Default 24.6.0

Jim

Modified by jschrempp

more options

.....

Modified by jschrempp

more options

If I had to guess, I would staert with the first two. Addblockplus modifies content and if it goes wrong such could occur. The same the the edit subject.

My first choice would be addblock.

I have ImportExportTools and Lightning and do not see an issue.

more options

I disabled AdBlockPlus at the suggestion of Matt. It's been two weeks now and I have not seen the bad behavior I described.

The problem was intermittent, so I'm hard pressed to say it is gone for good, but I think this is now 3x the mean time between failure.

I blame AdBlockPlus.

Thanks for the help.

Jim

more options

Jim, It may well be worth the effort to make a report on the add block support forum. They are, I understand, pretty good and take these sorts of issues seriously. https://adblockplus.org/forum/

more options

I posted this issue the the AdBlockPlus forum. Now that AdBlockPlus is not a suspect I have posted a note there letting them know. The link below is just for hysterical purposes.

https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23886

Modified by jschrempp

more options

Well, I spoke too soon. The problem with tabs showing the wrong content just happened again today and AdBlockPlus was disabled.

I have now disabled Edit Email Subject. We'll see if that solves the problem.

Jim

more options

Thanks for the idea on Ccleaner, but I'm not so keen on buying it. This Mac is only six weeks old. I did move a lot of email over to it, but I can't see it being that cluttered already.

more options

Well, here I am again because the problem happened again.

This time I had about five tabs open. I noticed that one of the tabs failed to refresh. I could click on any other tab and the window contents would update, but one particular tab just kept whatever was already in that window.

Since Edit Email Subject is disabled, I now say that is not the problem.

I'm back to this just being a problem with Thunderbird.

Jim