Main INBOX has headers and no messages, requires Repair Folder, leaves msgs blank
I notice many other people are experiencing this same problem, as it is posted multiple times here. Most current version Tbird sometimes (not consistently) displays the header of Inbox messages, but the message itself is blank. Yes, I use filters for all incoming messages so they go to sub-folders, which do not have this problem. Using Properties/Repair will fix the folder, but all the messages in it are lost during repair. Is Mozilla aware of this issue? Is it being resolved? Again, I find NO database (repair) tool ever, in Tbird, and feel there should be one - one which analyzes and repairs without removing messages! So is Mozilla aware of this, it seems to affect many people posting here.
All Replies (2)
re :Using Properties/Repair will fix the folder, but all the messages in it are lost during repair
No, this in incorrect. No messages are lost during a repair.
If the Inbox index gets out of synch with what is in actually in the Inbox, then you may see headers but no content.
If you then manually check the Inbox file in your Profile folders and see the emails are still visible, then repairing the Index will display those emails.
Repairing a folder has nothing to do with the loss of emails. It simply rebuilds the index to show what is actually in the Inbox.
If after a repair of index, all the headers you previously saw appear to disappear, then this is because the actual emails were already gone and not in the Inbox.
If emails had actually been deleted, then the index would reflect that and you would have seen this action mentioned in the 'Activity Manager'.
It is more likely that your anti-virus product has scanned the Inbox and either quarrantined it or in trying to fix it, completely messed it up. As AV has no reason to do anything to the index file, this can leave the index unchanged and appear out of synch.
If the Inbox file was already corrupted in some way, either by a lack of housekeeping (eg: frequent compacting) or by the AV program and it was then compacted, TB may have been unable to detect the start and end of specific 'marked as deleted' emails, resulting in the loss of emails.
Creating regular backups can help to recover emails. This is a practise that should be done anyway, but if you have another program scanning those files then you should be backing up even more frequently.
Compacting is a means of recovering space in a file. It removes all emails that have been 'marked as deleted' and hidden from inbox view. The Inbox and the Junk folders usually get a lot of activity when it comes to deleting and so these folders should get compacted more frequently than others.
Please read information below: How to keep a healthy Thunderbird - it has a lot of good basic info:
Compacting - what it does and why it is important:
Backups.
RE: I find NO database (repair) tool
This is a completely different issue to the one mentioned in previous comment. I presume you are referring to the Global database, which is used by TB to search for messages. This is another type of indexing. It has no effect in any way on actual emails, but if for whatever reason it becomes out of date, then a repair of index is necessary.
Here is a link to a Help article on this: