saving multiple emails as eml to computer doesn't save all emails that were selected
Hello,
[ Thunderbird 52.9.1(64bit) on Ubuntu 16.04LTS ]
I've been cleaning up my emails and have been deleting ones I don't need and archiving others that I wish to keep but not in my mailbox folders, so I've been sorting my mail into mail folders, then going into each folder and selecting all emails in the folder with CTRL+A and then right click and Save As, then selecting a folder on my computer to save all the emails to as .eml files however when I see how many were saved the count of .eml files doesn't match the count of emails in the folder which were selected, I found that one of the reasons was that one of the emails subject began with a period '.' and so on linux it interpreted it as a hidden file so wasn't immediately obvious (however it did save) but there was another email which definitely didn't save along with all the others, even though it was definitely selected along with all the others. I am able to right click on it individually and save as to my computer and have even gone into the folders properties and run the 'repair folder' option.
I was wondering why did it not get captured along with all the others when I have multiple emails selected?
Has anyone else experienced this behaviour?
UPDATE: (in case other people have the same issue) As part of writing this I just tried to select the problematic email along with only two others to try and troubleshoot and saved to a folder successfully along with the other two, I then repeated it by clicking the first email in the list, holding shift and clicking the last email in the list, effectively selecting all emails in the folder including the problematic one, and saving out to a folder and again it was successful. I then tried to repeating the CTRL+A, right click, save as thinking it must have been a CTRL+A issue and now it appears to be saving as it should. I'm guessing I just had to wait for Thunderbird to do some background synchronization tasks or something or maybe the repair fixed the issue but just took a little while to take effect?
Chosen solution
Figured out what the issue was!
The subject was too long, resulting in a filename which was too long, the reason I thought the issue resolved itself is because I was at that point saving the emails to a different directory which had a shorter absolute path than the initial directory on my computer I was attempting to save to.
I only realised when I tried to move my new directory full of all my .eml files back to the original location on my hard drive and I got an ubuntu "Error while copying "RE:.......eml" .... file name was too long"
So it seems the issue is that if you highlight multiple emails in Thunderbird and then save as to your computer, if any of the emails have a very long subject and it results in a file name that is longer than the filesystem limits including the path, it will just silently not save that particular email and you get no error message.
The reason this issue didn't manifest for me before when attempting to save the email individually is that when saving as part of a multiple selection Thunderbird changes the filename by appending the correspondents email address as well as the date and time the email was transmitted whereas saving an individual email as .eml it doesn't do this so you end up with a shorter filename.
Hope this helps someone else
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Chosen Solution
Figured out what the issue was!
The subject was too long, resulting in a filename which was too long, the reason I thought the issue resolved itself is because I was at that point saving the emails to a different directory which had a shorter absolute path than the initial directory on my computer I was attempting to save to.
I only realised when I tried to move my new directory full of all my .eml files back to the original location on my hard drive and I got an ubuntu "Error while copying "RE:.......eml" .... file name was too long"
So it seems the issue is that if you highlight multiple emails in Thunderbird and then save as to your computer, if any of the emails have a very long subject and it results in a file name that is longer than the filesystem limits including the path, it will just silently not save that particular email and you get no error message.
The reason this issue didn't manifest for me before when attempting to save the email individually is that when saving as part of a multiple selection Thunderbird changes the filename by appending the correspondents email address as well as the date and time the email was transmitted whereas saving an individual email as .eml it doesn't do this so you end up with a shorter filename.
Hope this helps someone else