Folders in Thunderbird are stored as files in your file system

The slash, and various other characters (e.g. *, ?) are unsafe to use in pathnames. You're lucky it has ever worked usefully for you.

I do really think that Thunderbird ought to refuse such pathnames.

first/second implies that second is a subfolder of first. I don't think you'll find a file named first/second in your profile. Thunderbird, being a cross-platform application, recognizes / as being equivalent to \.

Except that it doesn't appear to work that way at all. For example, on further examination, I also have a folder called 'EXP/AMD' and it remained unaltered after the update while a bunch of other were changed.

Looking at the file structure of the mail itself, it appears that the parent folder is an actual folder, while the child folders within are actual files -- broken into 2 files: one that contains the messages and another smaller one that I assume is index data with an .msf extension.

So the EXP/AMD folder resides in a parent folder called 'CT' that is an actual folder on my system, but the EXP/AMD folder actually shows as two files: EXP235ed82d and EXP235ed82d.msf. Yet in Tbird, it displays correctly as EXP/AMD.

The CRS/SRS folder in my problem example shows as a single file, however: CRS29f3e4f6, which corresponds to exactly what displays in Tbird. However, it appears to be missing its corresponding .msf file, as do a lot of the others in that folder and others. This would seem to be too big of a coincidence to me that the .msf file is missing and it suddenly no longer displays correctly in Tbird.

So it looks like the upgrade blew away a bunch of the index files. Is there a way to repair these?

Thx

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124287 I suggest you have a look at some of the bugs around folder names and particularly :\/. as mentioned by Xenos. If you can not find a match for your issue in the depends list I suggest you create a bug.

Basically folder names with a / or \ are know to be the causes of funky things.I suggest you rename the folders without the / or \ then the indexes will regenerate automatically.

Thanks, but you didn't read my second post. A few still work fine, others do not.

In NO case is it trying to create a file or folder with a slash in the name.

The difference between the working ones and the incorrect ones appears to be the missing .msf files of the same name as the problem ones.

All had worked fine for well over a decade prior to upgrading to v60. v60 appears to have smoked the .msf files for some folders. How do I fix that?

Marko82 said

Thanks, but you didn't read my second post. A few still work fine, others do not.

Yes I did. In it's entirety.

In NO case is it trying to create a file or folder with a slash in the name.

Your folder names have a \ in them. Creating editing copying moving. It is all the same really.

The difference between the working ones and the incorrect ones appears to be the missing .msf files of the same name as the problem ones.

I would guess all the other will follow, next time the index is regenerated. I gave you a way to get them to regenerate. rename the folders.

All had worked fine for well over a decade prior to upgrading to v60. v60 appears to have smoked the .msf files for some folders. How do I fix that?

I suggested you file a bug. Have you done that? My guess is no. You want a debate about how to create MSF files. The answer is still rename the folders, because the only way to get Thunderbird to create MSF file is when it does it automatically. There is no button, hidden preference or command line switch that will fix this for you.