Update to 102 turns into a major disaster

[Bitbeisser]

Sorry, but the recent update of Thunderbird 102 is turning for me more and more into an unmitigated disaster.

For one, the web site says that 102 is a standalone download, yet, all my hosts have downloaded and installed on reboot the update from 91 to 102. With a lot of issue in the aftermath... 😞

Beside the update crashing on reboot on some hosts, the 102 update doesn't seem to have been properly tested.
On all hosts (though a little random), not all of my previous accounts are properly expanding in the folder pane. I do have up to 7 different email accounts, and one or two of them become pretty much inaccessible after the upgrade. They don't show the caret that would allow for expanding, so I can actually see the inbox and all my subfolders (there are a lot of them!). But TB seems to be eagerly redownloading all my emails (not only headers) on all accounts!
Not sure if this forced reloading of the emails is causing this, but TB 102 is becoming repeatedly unresponsive, to the point where I have to leave one host alone, let it do its things, and temporarily check the email (or write one) on another system.
On those accounts that DO expand in the folder pane, when clicking on the inbox or any of the (many) folders, pretty much all of them have lost the sort order in which messages are supposed to be displayed. With several hundred folders, over all my email accounts (pretty much all but one GMail accounts), this is a huge hassle, as on first time access, I have to change the sort order again (commonly by date, newest one first).
And also incredibly annoying is that TB102 seems to ignore previously set (and working!) filters and at least some of them are not being applied! I do have a lot of them, as I move pretty much 95% of my incoming emails automatically in one of those many subfolders. That's what they are for, obviously...

So when can we expect an update that fixes all this mess and we can get back to doing our work, rather than trying to fix all those annoyances?

PS: Yes, there is also some good with the new 102 update. Not certain about the "places" thing yet, but at least the color scheme of the icons in the folder pane (and a couple other places) do have improved readability, a bit.

[Bitbeisser]

As for the problem with the filters, here is a perfect example of the nonsense that is coming up now, this was working just fine until the update to Thunderbird 102! It just throws an error message claiming that the destination folder in the filter doesn't exist, though it clearly does and I can either manually move the message in that folder or even edit the disable filter rule, reenter/browse to the target folder (so practically, not changing a thing), re-enable the filter and apply successfully to the message or folder

[RealRaven]

Could be caused by Tb102 migrating the settings userName and hostName to what was stored in realuserName and realHostname, which leads to modified folder URIs. Tb should do the migration transparently (and convert all filters, which use these URIs for the targetFolder argument) during the upgrade and restart. I think what can happen is that Thunderbird for some reason crashes or fails in this operation leaving you with unusable URIs.

My Add-ons QuickFolders stores  shortcuts to folders also as URI format and I have some mitigation strategies for fixing them when migrating from Thunderbird 91; I basically store the account id for each URI so that QuickFolders is  able to reconstruct the URIs automatically.The bug is described here: https://github.com/RealRaven2000/QuickFolders/issues/281

Unfortunately I don't think Thunderbird took such precautions (and the current msgFilterRules.dat format does not support storing such additional, redundant information), so I guess it would take a little detective work to fix.

I did add a debug function in QF that can print out the real URI of a folder which could be used to figure out how to quickly fix all targetFolder attributes in your filter rules.

this will copy the account number and Folder URI to the clipboard. if you have filters that move mail you will find the entries with the folder address in msgFilterRules.dat looking something like this:

action="Move to folder"
actionValue="mailbox://someUser@someHost/Development/Mozilla/Addons/quickFilters/Support""

the folder URI should match the one you have determined above. If the patch broke it, then most likely the first part of the URI will be borked, someUser and / or someHost where modified in Thunderbird itself but were not corrected in the filter rules folder. It's a simple matter of replacing them accordingly (with Thunderbird off) before starting Thunderbird.

[r1nce]

It looks I am not alone and got hit hard by the update.

I just clicked on the update button and lost all my mail filters and I am unabble to recreate them by pointing them to the right directorys. After an hour I gave up and downgraded to 91.9 from the archives to find out that I need to delete compatibility.ini from my profile to make this downgrade happen.

I use a plain TB without any plugins. MacOS 12

It is pretty painful if you recieve 2000 mails per day having a 150G mailbox dating back to 2006. I know this is some kind of extreme use but this archive saved my ass several times.

Any Idea how to fix the mail filters?

[RealRaven]

Do you have any backups of you profile folder? Obviously backing that up regularly is the most important step for avoiding disasters...

I know it's too late but for others you can use my Add-on quickFilters Pro to back up your filters for each account. Maybe I should add a scheduled backup feature?

Tb 104 will get Firefox Sync support then we could use that as a data store and even to sync 2 machines.

If you want you can also do some forensics in your profile folder - every Mail and Imapmail  account has its own msgFilterRules.dat - if they are not completely empty maybe you can rescue your filters. As Tb102 got rid of realUsername and realHostname they may have just changed your target folders around (making the filters not work) - this can be quickly fixed by replacing the start of the uris. If that's the case you can send me the quickFilters exports and I can help you with that...

What I don't like about the upgrade process s that it apparently doesn't make backups for files such as the filters files or prefs.js which would make it much much easier to roll back in case of something going wrong.

[r1nce]

I do have a backup.

I also have a complete copy of the Thunderbird folders on another computer in case one of them fails. MacOS / Linux

I have a huge POP3 server before that which can hold my messages for both computers for serveral weeks so that I can read in emercency via a web mailer.

I know this is a crazy setup but sometimes it has saved me. (Yeah glued computers with faulty HDDs. Apple made my day twice!)

My current file says:
actionValue="mailbox://user%25somewhere.to@pop3.popmail.to/Inbox/WhereToMove"

What is the propper way to rewrite it if the profile is stored here?

/Users/user/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/randomstufquerwerew-release/Mail/post.popmail.to/Inbox.sbd/WhereToMove

Note pop3/post is not an error but a DNS alias

[RealRaven]

you can either replace the complete contents of the profile folder or make a new copy under a different name, then edit profiles.ini to generate a new entry for profile manager. You can also point to a different hard drive (I moved my 30GB profile from a hard drive to SSD after Tb102 performance was relatively bad)

edit %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles.ini

For example here is a test profile:

[Profile12]
Name=Tb 78
IsRelative=0
Path=W:\_Tb Profiles\ol5h0xyq.Beta_68

The IsRelative=0 entry means that we point to an absolute position (not starting from the Profiles folder)

When you start Tb make sure to specify "-ProfileManager" as startup parameter.

[Bitbeisser]

Ever since the 102.0.3 update, that problem has not re-appeared. All messages still there and all filter are working again as expected, so I still have to deal with the occasional folder where I manually have to put the folder contents into the right order for me, but those are pretty much all folders where I get less than regular emails for.

[OldFart]

Tried to update again from 91.12.0 to  102.1.2. This is what happened when using
a mapped network drive on W11 Pro:

• Upgrade finished without errors
• Thunderbird startup took 90 s until the Inbox while was shown
• Sending an EMail fails (or at least took too long to be trusted, waited two minutes for a one liner until cancellation)
• Time to start up in secure mode was comparable to 91.12

Summary (at least for me): I will not fool around with configuration settings. Normal users should will not accept such workarounds. There is still QA work to do:

1. QA Test case: Try out upgrade using large EMail DBs with lots of filters
2. QA Test case: Try out upgrade using mapped drives pointing to smb shares which contain the TB EMail db files
3. QA Test case: Try out DB consistency after killing or crashing TB

[NL-T]

Thunderbird is currently unusable. My installation was updated from 91.10 to 102 and after compacting (or maybe already before), TB started displaying messages not connected to the headers. Fortunately, it didn't mess up gmail (IMAP) yet, but I don't trust TB anymore.

[tijsco]

The problem with displaying the wrong message in preview pane or an empty message in the preview pane is still there in Thunderbird 102.0.2. This is getting really annoying!!!

[MattAuSupport]

Have you tried tight clicking the folder, selecting properties and then the repair button?  That has been standard operations for fixing indexing issues doe more than 10 years.

[Gerhard_hh]

The German version is unusable too. I got always "no response - keine Rückmeldung". When I used a new profile and import all it works. But then I have no no images in the card books and my calendars are empty. Also my tasks.

This is an desaster.

[Rockus]

Working for me - but I have to repair the "Zusammenfassungsdateien" of my three inboxes nearly every start ... weird. To avoid doubled, tripled, quadrupled listed entries of the same mail !

It seems to be a very old zombie bug, triggered to life by the 102 update.

[DDTex]

I am having the same issue with the message filters.  They weere working fine before the update to 102, but now they are practically useless.  I hope the developers see this and fix the issue soon.

[Bitbeisser]

No problem with the connections, but the filters (and sort order in the folders) are all f'ed up. By now, I have recreated pretty much all the filters but it is a MAJOR pain in the derriere....

[bfclarke]

I have to do the same thing. Very frustrating.

[MattAuSupport]

I upgraded to V102.0  since then I have stepped through all of the point upgrades offered.  None of my filters are showing issues.  They are probably the most stable they have been since version 2.

What I have seen in the past is that folk with loads of filters and a penchant for clicking get mail often have issues, as the getting of mail never really ends before it starts again.  I have also observed many using IMAP accounts have issues filtering on body contents of the email.  Setting the filter to work after junk classification assists there because with IMAP the header of the mail arrives before the body.  Junk classification can only occur after the body arrives apparently

However, a feedback forum such as this is not somewhere to seek support.  That is done here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new/thunderbird/form

I strongly suggest folk post support requests if they have issues they can not resolve, like filters not working.

[bfclarke]

I am having huge issues with email filters. I have to set up new filters for two groups I belong to, no matter what I do the filter will not direct these emails to the folders I have set up, I now have to create new rules every time one of the group replies or sends a new email to me. They go straight into my inbox and not the folders I have created rules for. Very very frustrating.

[Wick]

Spot on. The trash folder is not working correctly after this update. I tried to find help with this in community and there was someone else with the same problem but it sounds like he left Thunderbird as the answers he got were very arrogant. He stated he was a new user but the helpful voices kept using advice above his understanding. I'm not here to bash help but what is going on with the Trash folder after the update??? I have donated in the past but my new donations are on hold as of now.

[Helpseeking]

In my case the filters seem to stop working after an update.  It stopped working after the 102 update, but after I manually ran it once, it worked, but stopped working again after the 102.0.1 update.  It seem to work after I manually ran it, - but only half ways.  There is a mail that is not forwarded. 

[EricinDallas]

I have missing emails in inbox folder on startup.  They show up later in the day.  I have duplicate emails in the inbox.  I have emails that showup on my iphone and don't show up on TB desktop inbox for hours.  I keep re-setting the folder format (Starred, thread, from, etc) to get rid of the new (to me) stuff, "Starred" "Correspondents", etc and on startup the default 102 format re-asserts itself.

My wife had a meltdown over missing inbox (old) emails this morning.  They mysteriously re-appeared a couple of hours later.

102 is a disaster.

[Bitbeisser]

Not quite the issues that I had. Emails were not "missing" but it seems that right after the update Thunderbird was re-downloading all headers and messages, in all account and all folders. The only indication of that is either very fast or very slow messages in the lower left status bar.
If I have been able to open up and account (which immediately didn't work on two or seven accounts), all the messages were there, at least nothing I could notice.

I was able to get those accounts that wouldn't open going by trying to create a temporary/dummy sub-folder. Well, those newly created folders didn't show up, but after that I was able to open/expand both of those previously inaccessible accounts.

And there is still the problem with the filters, that all worked flawlessly before the 102 update, working randomly at best. And some rules have to be re-created repeatedly, lets hope that the developers can come up with some solution for this, but beside some random activity on that Bugzilla report that I filed about this issue, nothing seems to have been fixed as of yet...
But it seems rather random if Thunderbird remembers the sort order in each of the folders, there are several that I had to change back they way they were before the update, repeatedly in some cases.

[GaryPlazyk]

Me, too - TB 102 may cause me to drop Thunderbird altogether... Immediately after upgrading to TB 102, many of my filters were throwing error messages that the message could not be added to a folder. And my folders keep expanding with multiple copies of messages - sometimes 6 to 8 copies! I applied the .1 and the .2 patches, and things just got worse - I can no longer find one of my email account folders, containing 20+ years of personal emails.

[GaryS]

Ever since the latest Thunderbird update (102.0), I've had all sorts of problems with Thunderbird.  Some email doesn't show up in my Inbox at all.  Other email shows up, but the message content is blank.  Other email shows up and shows the HTML code in the message window instead of interpreting it as it should.  Other email content does not match the subject and sender.  In other words, Thunderbird seems to be showing the message content from one email with the subject and sender from another email.

These are just the problems I've found so far.  Can I go back to a previous version of Thunderbird when things were still working?

[godzillaman2020]

I've the same issues, remember a former upgrade with losing my profiles and a long walk back through backups. I hope this time I won't be punished to much as early adopter. But I can confirm to have all the issues you have. Hope there'll be a soon fix. Going back was up to now only possible if you have a profile saved in the version you want to go back, losing what came after upgrde included:-(

[Travelingelk]

I'm having the same problems plus others! I remember when they went from the ver. 60's to 90's. I lost all of my folders, contacts, everything. This was supposed to be such a clean rollout! HA!! Like a fool I believed what they hyped and didn't backup my previous ver 102. I hate Outlook but.......

[Bobthegrey]

I am another one with the same problem. I am constantly getting html email that is not interpreted. I have tried repairing the inbox folder multiple times with no help. Why is nobody from Mozzila on here to provide some help? I have multiple webmail accounts that I combine in Thunderbird to make life simpler, not so much anymore. Any thoughts on another mail program? They should at least let us reinstall a working release.

[Bobthegrey]

I just found the following,"Thunderbird version 102.0.1 is only offered as direct download from thunderbird.net and not as an upgrade from Thunderbird version 91 or earlier. A future release will provide updates from earlier versions." This is a flat out lie. I did not do anything to have this version installed. It just showed up as installed, I didn't even get a message that is was available. Somebody from Mozilla needs to stand up and take ownership of this fiasco.

[AdrianLeeG]

There is a tickbox in "settings" which allows you to be notified about updates but "choose whether to intsall".   Of course you have to realise in advance there might be a problem... but second time around it would allow you not to update for the moment until fixes were available (assuming they will be).

[martineau]

The only thing wrong I've noticed so far is that my Favorites folder are gone, and if I recreate them, they disappear next time I run the app. Even more infurating is when trying to re-install the previous version (which was very hard to find) I got a warning that my profile had been changed by a newer version and if I proceeded I would have to re-add all my email accounts again. Needless to say I canceled out.

I thought it was weird that this update version such a big jump — from 91.11.0 to 102.0 — and that wasn't offered to me the normal way. Now I understand why — it consists of major changes. The timing also pretty lousy, IMO, right before or during a major holiday in the US. This is certainly not what I wanted to be spending my time screwing around with…

[martineau]

Happy to report that the recent 102.0.1 update seems to have solved the not-retaining-the-Favorite folders issue — YAY!

[NL-T]

Same issues here. Especially the inbox seems compromised. When I switch to All mail (gmail account), message content matches subject and sender again.

[User1984]

Hello, in my case, the local folders, the message filters and the add-ons installed in addition to other accounts that I had synchronized, it is as if I had generated a new empty profile exclusively with the main account. Luckily I was able to recover the old profile and although I had to redo the filters I saved the situation

[Copa]

Same here, same issues:(

I tried repairing the Inbox folder, with no improvement, then deleting it and letting Thunderbird replace with a new one, That seems to have cured the unmatched content but the HTML problem of showing only the code persists randomly.

Tried going back to 91.x, but the profile has been modified for 102, so that did not work. Hope the next update sorts this out very soon.

[GaryS]

It's getting worse.  Now I'm finding that the message bodies of some of my old emails in my Inbox have gone blank.  Uuuuggghhh!!

[Travelingelk]

I have lost some very important papers and NOT A WHIMPER out of Mozilla! It is as though it's not a big deal. They did this to us before and a lot of us have never recovered.

[Ambidextrous]

Same problems here. Lost my whole calender. Lost all contacts. Imported them from Google and Live but you cannot search the contacts lists. Returns no contacts in any search. Writing a contact name in the e-mail "To" fields only returns an error.Like there is no contact lists at all. I am really fighting hard to not need to go back to MS-Office, but it is tough when you have to use so much time, just to get an e-mail off. We are trying to use this for actual work...

[Travelingelk]

I had a little extra time today and looked at my folders! I almost broke out into tears when I realized that I have lost ALL of my insurance papers, warranty information, and all of the information in 98% of my folders. GONE! Hear me TB? GONE and might not be able to be replaced. I am thinking that a Class Action law suite might be in order here! I am so sorry that I have contributed several times to help in this development. They will NEVER get another penny from me.

[Bobthegrey]

Have you not been making multiple backups of your system? If you have you could go to the Thunderbird folder in c:\users\"your username'\AppData\Roaming and restore from the subdirectory Profiles if the backup was made before Mozilla pushed this abomination out with no notice. Hope this helps.