Hello Thomas,
On Saturday, May 22, 2004, at 12:22:15 AM, I received a message,
mid:[EMAIL PROTECTED],
in which you wrote:
(Text not relevant to my reply may have been snipped.)
> On Fri, 21 May 2004 12:10:04 -0500 GMT (22/05/2004, 00:10 +0700 GMT),
> Stan Robins wrote:
SR>> These were messages that I had read. They did have any filter
SR>> associated with them.
> Did or did not? From the context, I guess that you mean they did *not*
> have a filter associated with them.
Sorry. Yes, it should have read did *not*.
SR>> This phenomenon of messages disappearing had happened at least once
SR>> before recently. But I am sure it didn't affect all my Read messages.
> You mean it is not reliably reproducable? That opens another can of
> worms. Because I was of the opinion that somehow, a stray filter (I
> would now guess: a Read filter) was the culprit. But then the effect
> should be there every time.
Each time messages have disappeared, the Inbox had been set to purge
and compress. I turned that off after we started exchanging messages
here. Since turning off the purge and compress feature, no messages
appear to be missing from my Inbox. I have moved some critical Read
messages out of the Inbox to another mailbox for "safekeeping." But
all of the remaining Read message appear still to be there.
> OK. So, when the messages are gone, they should still be there when
> you Browse Deleted, and you can also reinstate them by hitting <del>
> on them in that folder.
See above.
SR>> In her case, I think it is too late to try this remedy. Noted for
SR>> future reference, though. Thanks.
> It's more like a step in diagnosis rather than a remedy. I wanted to
> know whether the messages are really gone from the base, or whether
> they are not displayed for some reason.
SR>> I am going to check her settings and turn off purging and compressing
SR>> for now.
> OK. Let me know something: Have you every copied any filters or other
> parts of TB between your cmpauter and your daughter's, manually or
> electronically?
No. But I might have set up some filters for her. I was trying to show
her the advantages of using The Bat! vs. Outlook Express. So far I
haven't been entirely persuasive. 8^)
SR>> I should pare down my filters. Many are obsolete. I do use Read
SR>> message filters more than any other.
> It's my guess that it's a stray Read filter.
I see at least 4 problems with that theory:
1. In my experience, Read filters move the message immediately once
the message becomes Read and the user moves on to another message, or
otherwise changes the focus from the filtered Read message to
something else.
All of the Read messages involved had remained in the Inbox after
becoming Read. They only disappeared after the Bat! had been closed,
the computer suspended and reawakened and the Bat! restarted.
2. All of many (at least 2 dozen) Read messages were gone. They were
from random (for all practical purposes) senders. It would be highly
unlikely that there were Read filters for all those senders.
3. I had not created any filters during the period when I first
noticed the mysterious message disappearance behavior. (About 10 days
ago.)
4. When I did a Search for the messages in the entire Account, I did
turn up older messages from some of the senders in other folders, to
which I had manually moved them awhile ago. If a filter had been at
work, the latest messages would have been in some target folder
outside the Inbox. The search recovered no recent messages from those
senders.
Actually, the behavior did begin about the time I upgraded from the
Christmas Edition to V. 2.10.01. I can't be too precise about that
because I didn't note the exact date I installed 2.10.01. It appears
that I downloaded it on 20 April 2004.
I have now gone through and cleaned up all my filters. I have these
observations:
a. None of the missing messages that I can recall having been in the
Inbox were subject to a Read filter.
b. Most of my Read filters were people already in my Address Book.
Those filters all showed the Inbox as the Source. But those messages
all go directly into the Known Inbox by virtue of the Known filter,
which appears to supercede all other filters. Most, but not all of
those filters had been set to both Active and Manual only.
Most of those filters sent messages to either a Family or a Misc.
Personal Inbox.
c. Most of the time all of the messages in my Known Inbox have been
Read. (Compared to my Inbox, where more than half are Unread.) The
messages in my Known mailbox, most of which are subject to a Read
filter, never move until I manually filter the Known folder.
d. I had a number of duplicate filters, including duplicate Incoming
and Read filters. Most filters had ordinary destination Mailboxes.
Some had the Trash as the destination. All were Active, but not all
were Manual only.
I stress that the Read messages that disappeared entirely had
persisted in the Inbox for some period of time, although I can't say
that they persisted through closing and restarting The Bat!. In fact,
they probably did not survive a closing and restart.
One gets used to the behavior of frequently used software. With all
versions before 2.10.01, if a Read message persisted after the focus
changed, that meant it was not subject to an active filter, and it
would be there until purged by virtue of the folder setting. In the
case of the Inbox, this would be at least 6 months, if I just left the
message sit. (My Inbox settings were 200 messages or 180 days. I
probably average a 6 messages a day into the Inbox.)
In the earlier and current instances of disappearing messages, the
messages persisted after the focus changed. And, as noted above, I can
recall a number of those messages that were not subject to any filter.
(But even if they were, the targets would have most likely been
folders other than the Trash.)
I thought perhaps that there was something haywire in the filtering
routines. But I now suspect a bug in the purge and compress functions.
The proof will be if more reports come in of disappearing messages.
--
Stan Robins
Mendota Heights, MN
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Using The Bat, 2.10.01
www.ritlabs.com
*************
"Golf and sex are the only two things you can enjoy
without being good at either of 'em!"
-- Jimmy Demaret
*************
________________________________________________
Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information:
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