I've been having issues with TB 91.11.0 (64-bit) on Windows 10 Home edition running on an Asus Celeron laptop. Many times I'm having issues with messages in folders not showing their subject information (the field is blank). Often the date field returns to the beginning of the Linux epoch. Using the Properties, Repair Folder usually restores the folders indexing, but often sets the status of many (often most) messages to unread.
Recently all the messages in all the TB folders suddenly blanked out. The folders still showed the proper count of the messages, and the correct count for unread messages, but nothing was displayed in the reading or header pane. Repair Folder would sometimes restore the information, but when I left the folder, the information would again vanish.
Eventually, I had to remove all the *.msf files and let TB reindex everything. This meant going through every folder and wait for TB to do the reindex as a foreground process. Even after doing all my ~70 or so folders, I still noticed some of them again had messages with showing blank subjects and bad message dates in the header section that had to be fixed with the Repair Folder option.
I'd like to suggest some administrative improvements to TB.
- A global msf reindex background function that would process all folders and replace the existing msf files with a new, correctly indexed, msf file (without the user having to revisit each folder).
- A global Properties, Repair Folder option that would recheck all folders and repair damage found without marking everything as unread and which would run in the background.
- Thunderbird should check all msf files upon startup and warn or repair any damage found.
- TB needs an overhaul of the msf processes to prevent msf index corruption.
- A TB utility that can check and repair the msf files outside of TB itself. displaying any issues found and requesting user approval of fixes, or automatic operation with user approval.
I've worked with many email clients, but TB is the first I've ever seen that has problems like this with message indexing. This is a major issue that needs to be addresses with a higher priority than pretty colors on buttons, or redesigned fancy menus. This is basic functionality that needs to be corrected as soon as possible.
