NoWay wrote:

> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed this
> thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she starts TB.
> Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then displays the subject
> of each message as normal. But, when you click on a message, nothing is
> displayed in the message pane. New messages change from bold to normal
> font, as correct, but no message is displayed. A sub-folder of the
> Inbox operates normally and correctly.
>
> What's up?!
>
> TIA,
> Fred
First, Click on File, Compact Folders. Then close TB and using your
file manager, locate the mail section of the TB profile. Now, delete
all the *.msf files. Restart TB. Does this work now?

To locate the TB profile, you can read this:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thund...profile#locate

but if you're using windows, then you must read this first:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ddenfiles.mspx

--
You Know You're Getting Even Older When . . . You try to straighten
out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren't wearing any.

On 07-07-2006 00:24 CET, NoWay composed this enchanting statement:
> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed this
> thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she starts
> TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then displays the
> subject of each message as normal. But, when you click on a message,
> nothing is displayed in the message pane. New messages change from
> bold to normal font, as correct, but no message is displayed. A
> sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and correctly.
>
> What's up?!
The 'Inbox' message index probably needs to be reconstructed. Exercise
the following:
- to be safe, finish (exit) from your Thunderbird (TB) session;
- locate 'Inbox.msf' (the message index) in the TB user profile's
account directory and (rename or) delete it;
- start TB and focus on the 'Inbox' folder to recreate its index.
- compact (the Inbox folder (see the File menu).

How many messages are left to display now? If you do not miss any
important messages, compact the Inbox folder: select the appropriate
option either on the File menu, or on the context menu (right click on
the folder).

The Inbox should be treated as a transient place. So, it would be better
to continuously archive the received messages in TB Local Folders,
rather than keeping them in the Inbox. Message filters can assist you
there (refer to Tools ->Message Filters ...).

--
Kind regards,

Melchert

MacOS 10.3.9/Firefox 1.5/Thunderbird 1.5

On 07-07-2006 01:03 CET, Melchert Fruitema composed this enchanting
statement:
> On 07-07-2006 00:24 CET, NoWay composed this enchanting statement:
>> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed this
>> thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she starts
>> TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then displays the
>> subject of each message as normal. But, when you click on a message,
>> nothing is displayed in the message pane. New messages change from
>> bold to normal font, as correct, but no message is displayed. A
>> sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and correctly.
>>
>> What's up?!
> The 'Inbox' message index probably needs to be reconstructed. Exercise
> the following:
> - to be safe, finish (exit) from your Thunderbird (TB) session;
> - locate 'Inbox.msf' (the message index) in the TB user profile's
> account directory and (rename or) delete it;
> - start TB and focus on the 'Inbox' folder to recreate its index.
> - compact (the Inbox folder (see the File menu).
>
> How many messages are left to display now? If you do not miss any
> important messages, compact the Inbox folder: select the appropriate
> option either on the File menu, or on the context menu (right click on
> the folder).
>
> The Inbox should be treated as a transient place. So, it would be
> better to continuously archive the received messages in TB Local
> Folders, rather than keeping them in the Inbox. Message filters can
> assist you there (refer to Tools ->Message Filters ...).
Oops, ... strike out 'compact' from the exercise.

--
Kind regards,

Melchert

MacOS 10.3.9/Firefox 1.5/Thunderbird 1.5

gwtc wrote:
> NoWay wrote:
>
>> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed this
>> thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she starts
>> TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then displays the
>> subject of each message as normal. But, when you click on a message,
>> nothing is displayed in the message pane. New messages change from
>> bold to normal font, as correct, but no message is displayed. A
>> sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and correctly.
>>
>> What's up?!
>>
>> TIA,
>> Fred
> First, Click on File, Compact Folders. Then close TB and using your
> file manager, locate the mail section of the TB profile. Now, delete
> all the *.msf files. Restart TB. Does this work now?
>
> To locate the TB profile, you can read this:
> http://www.mozilla.org/support/thund...profile#locate
>
> but if you're using windows, then you must read this first:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ddenfiles.mspx
>
>
Worked like a champ - guess this isn't the 1st time for this problem,
huh?!

Thanks a bunch - she's happier now!

Fred

NoWay wrote:

> gwtc wrote:
>
>>NoWay wrote:
>>
>>
>>>My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed this
>>>thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she starts
>>>TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then displays the
>>>subject of each message as normal. But, when you click on a message,
>>>nothing is displayed in the message pane. New messages change from
>>>bold to normal font, as correct, but no message is displayed. A
>>>sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and correctly.
>>>
>>>What's up?!
>>>
>>>TIA,
>>>Fred
>>
>>First, Click on File, Compact Folders. Then close TB and using your
>>file manager, locate the mail section of the TB profile. Now, delete
>>all the *.msf files. Restart TB. Does this work now?
>>
>>To locate the TB profile, you can read this:
>>http://www.mozilla.org/support/thund...profile#locate
>>
>>but if you're using windows, then you must read this first:
>>http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ddenfiles.mspx
>>
>>
>
> Worked like a champ - guess this isn't the 1st time for this problem,
> huh?!
>
> Thanks a bunch - she's happier now!
>
> Fred
thoss index files can become corrupt very quickly, and this is the
only known solution

--
You Know You're Getting Even Older When . . . You try to straighten
out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren't wearing any.

NoWay wrote:
> gwtc wrote:
>> NoWay wrote:
>>
>>> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed this
>>> thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she starts
>>> TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then displays the
>>> subject of each message as normal. But, when you click on a message,
>>> nothing is displayed in the message pane. New messages change from
>>> bold to normal font, as correct, but no message is displayed. A
>>> sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and correctly.
>>>
>>> What's up?!
>>>
>>> TIA,
>>> Fred
>> First, Click on File, Compact Folders. Then close TB and using your
>> file manager, locate the mail section of the TB profile. Now, delete
>> all the *.msf files. Restart TB. Does this work now?
>>
>> To locate the TB profile, you can read this:
>> http://www.mozilla.org/support/thund...profile#locate
>>
>> but if you're using windows, then you must read this first:
>> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ddenfiles.mspx
>>
>>
> Worked like a champ - guess this isn't the 1st time for this problem,
> huh?!
>
> Thanks a bunch - she's happier now!
>
> Fred

No, it's not. The problem is that some people delete email, but never
compress the database, leaving multi-gigabyte files with all that old
'deleted' data within the big file for the program to search through for
current messages. Note that in NO case should the index have to be
rebuilt each time. This is probably a result of the inbox growing way
too big for the indexing capacity. Thus the loss of message display.
To guard against this happening again in the future, you can set TB to
compact the database when x amount of space would be saved.
Tools/Options/Advanced/Disk space is the place to set this. Note that
this option will cause a message to appear when the program finds x
amount of wasted space in the inbox, which some people find annoying.

On 07.07.2006 01:31 am, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused NoWay to
generate the following:? :

> gwtc wrote:
>
>> NoWay wrote:
>>
>>> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed
>>> this thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she
>>> starts TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then
>>> displays the subject of each message as normal. But, when you click
>>> on a message, nothing is displayed in the message pane. New
>>> messages change from bold to normal font, as correct, but no message
>>> is displayed. A sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and
>>> correctly.
>>>
>>> What's up?!
>>>
>>> TIA,
>>> Fred
>>
>> First, Click on File, Compact Folders. Then close TB and using your
>> file manager, locate the mail section of the TB profile. Now, delete
>> all the *.msf files. Restart TB. Does this work now?
>>
>> To locate the TB profile, you can read this:
>> http://www.mozilla.org/support/thund...profile#locate
>>
>> but if you're using windows, then you must read this first:
>> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ddenfiles.mspx
>>
>>
> Worked like a champ - guess this isn't the 1st time for this problem,
> huh?!
>
> Thanks a bunch - she's happier now!
>
> Fred

happy wife=happy husband=happy poster to these Newsgroups!

Oh, Happy Dayyyyyyyy :-P

reg

On 7/6/06 4:28 PM, Melchert Fruitema posted the following:
> On 07-07-2006 01:03 CET, Melchert Fruitema composed this enchanting
> statement:
>> On 07-07-2006 00:24 CET, NoWay composed this enchanting statement:
>>> My wife's computer (HP, WinXPsp2, and Thunderbird) has developed
>>> this thing about "Building Summary File for Inbox" every time she
>>> starts TB. Takes about 10 minutes (~560 msgs in inbox), then
>>> displays the subject of each message as normal. But, when you click
>>> on a message, nothing is displayed in the message pane. New
>>> messages change from bold to normal font, as correct, but no message
>>> is displayed. A sub-folder of the Inbox operates normally and
>>> correctly.
>>>
>>> What's up?!
>> The 'Inbox' message index probably needs to be reconstructed.
>> Exercise the following:
>> - to be safe, finish (exit) from your Thunderbird (TB) session;
>> - locate 'Inbox.msf' (the message index) in the TB user profile's
>> account directory and (rename or) delete it;
>> - start TB and focus on the 'Inbox' folder to recreate its index.
>> - compact (the Inbox folder (see the File menu).
>>
>> How many messages are left to display now? If you do not miss any
>> important messages, compact the Inbox folder: select the appropriate
>> option either on the File menu, or on the context menu (right click
>> on the folder).
>>
>> The Inbox should be treated as a transient place. So, it would be
>> better to continuously archive the received messages in TB Local
>> Folders, rather than keeping them in the Inbox. Message filters can
>> assist you there (refer to Tools ->Message Filters ...).
> Oops, ... strike out 'compact' from the exercise.
>
Good point. There's no benefit of compacting folders, then deleting the
..msf files.

There's benefit to compacting, then seeing if the problem is fixed, and
if not, then deleting the .msf file(s).

--
John McWilliams