Hello.
I am using Thunderbird Portable Edition 78.5.0 on PortableApps platform 17.1.1. I have many (over 70) folders, most of which are populated by filters which are enabled to run automatically.
In the past, folders which had new messages were shown by a change of colour together with an asterisk. More recently, this is just shown by the colour of the folder name changing from black to blue; this is not always easy to spot, especially since my eyes are not what they were.
However, a more worrying problem has arisen in recent weeks. The indication of a new message disappears before I open the folder; the folder name changes back to black, implying that there are no new messages in that folder. This seems to be random, or at least I have not been able to discern any pattern. In addition, sometimes newly-arrived messages are no longer indicated by an asterisk; this also appears to be random, and seems to be in folders that do indicate a new message as well as those that don't. Now, I am having to go through every folder to check there are no new messages, which is obviously inconvenient at the least.
I had hoped that all the recent updates might have solved the issue, but they haven't.
I submitted this request on the Thunderbird website (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US) over a week ago, but have not received any response; there have been 7 views.
I would be grateful for any help in overcoming this problem.
Cheers.
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Disappearing New Message folder indication
December 4, 2020 - 1:01pm
#1
Disappearing New Message folder indication
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Hello.
I'm disappointed that there has not been any response to my plea for help 2 months ago.
The situation has not changed. After a new message has arrived, thus changing the colour of its folder name to blue and adding an asterisk, sometimes, seemingly randomly, the colour changes back from blue to black and the asterisk disappears. I can no longer risk messages arriving automatically, and so have unticked 'Check for new messages every _ minutes' and 'Automatically download new messages'.
I have got into a routine in the past 2 months. When I click Get Messages, I sit with a pen and paper and scribble down the names of the folders shown as having new messages. Then I can, leisurely, open them and see the new messages or guess which ones are new if the message asterisk has disappeared. An example of this illustrates my frustration. Today, clicking Get Messages downloaded 24 new messages in 18 folders; I left them alone. Within about 5 minutes, the blue colour of 13 of those folders had reverted to black, with no asterisk. If I hadn't noted which folders had new messages, I would have had no way of knowing they contained new messages. After looking at all these folders, I found 22 of the 24 messages; I have no idea where the other 2 are, and can only hope that they were not important. This situation is not what I would expect from 'the leading open source, cross-platform email ... client'.
This was not an issue until a few months ago. Thunderbird had been fine, and highly recommendable, in all the years (about 14) that I've used it, until recently. Now, unfortunately, it is not reliable.
Can anyone tell me:
1. the condition that needs to be satisfied for a change in the colour of a folder name from blue to black;
2. the signal that triggers removing the asterisk from an unread message, while still leaving the message subject in bold?
I would be really grateful for any such information so that I could then experiment with changing settings.
Cheers.
It's not really something we can assist with. We neither code nor support Thunderbird itself. I make it portable with custom code and support the portable-ness of it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks very much for your response, John. I heard nothing from the Thunderbird website and so wondered whether you could help. Since you assure me that the problems are not a PortableApps issue, I will pursue Thunderbird. Do you have any suggestions of how I can contact them, other than via a post on their website (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1315352#answer-1389803)?
Cheers.