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Show stopper if this can't be fixed, all my Common Folders have disappeared!
 
#1
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For the past 6 days I have been testing TB, and liking it very much.  And a lot of time (time is $$!) has been spent setting up many Common Folders.  I have multiple email accounts for my business, and Common Folders are the best way to organize my email.  And they have many sub-folders as well.

But this morning, every single Common Folder was gone!!  The accounts were still intact, but all that work of setting up the other folders was destroyed.

Yes, they are all still there on my hard drive in the TB Mail directory, but now I need to re-create all those folders in TB again.  This will take time, and it is something I will NOT want to do every now & then.

I have submitted a support ticket, and I have a feeling that this is not fixable, but I will wait for the reply.  TB has been around many years, yet this happens.  :(
 
 
 
#2
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Open the Bat and try pressing these keys at the same time:
CONTROL ALT SHIFT L
 
 
 
#3
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I actually tried that earlier, but it didn't work because the only folders available to start with were Account folders, and the problem was Common folders.

For your suggestion to work (and I tried this only on a whim), I needed to re-create at least one Common folder, click on it, then do Ctrl+alt+Shift+L.  Once I did that, everything returned.

Whoever is doing support tickets should be made aware of this, because so far the agent seems to have no clue that if all Common folders have disappeared, you need to re-create one to make this work.
 
 
 
#4
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One more thing.... when I restored the folders, it pulled in ALL folders in the Mail directory, including:
  • Attachments
  • dictionaries
  • Speller
  • imgfiles
I have no reason for these to show up in TB.  How do I hide them again?
Edited: cbiweb - 11 November 2014 21:31:52
 
 
 
#5
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Sorry to keep posting, but..... this isn't good.

Last night I spent 3 hours migrating all my messages from PocoMail into The Bat!, and getting them all into their respective folders.  There is ten years worth of messages there. And now, after fixing the issue of missing folders, then seeing that a few unecessary folders were pulled in..... I find a new problem:

Nearly all the messages I migrated last night are not showing up in TB.  I checked the .TBB and .TBN files on the hard drive and the file sizes indicate that the messages still exist, but TB is not pulling them in!!

If there is a way to fix this, am I going to have to go through all this every day?  In fact, having to go through it AT ALL is unacceptable.  I've never seen an email client act this way.  And TB being around for so long -- and for the price of it -- you'd think it would be much more stable.
Edited: cbiweb - 11 November 2014 21:52:11
 
 
 
#6
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You can delete them with the option to leave the message base intact (or something like that)
 
 
 
#7
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That worked, but I still have the problem of the missing messages themselves (post #5). :(
 
 
 
#8
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Running  the maintenance center should help. If it is just a couple of folders go out and delete the index files
 
 
 
#9
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Didn't help.

And each time I start TB, there are folders that go missing.  Even after I recover them with  the key combo, they're gone again with each restart.  And the messages aren't returning at all.

This is so unfortunate because TB is the best POP3 client I've come across after trying all the other options out there.  But these issues with the folders and messages are keeping my money in my wallet.  I run a business, and can't have this sort of thing happening.
 
 
 
#10
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How did you install TB, with a backup from CD or something?
It looks like your file with folder information is readonly.
IIRC that's the account.flb file.
Every account has its own copy in the account directory. The common folders are listed in the mail directory.

If it isn't readonly, then it might be corrupted and therefore unreadable/unalterable. In that case you could consider to delete (or rename) it. While TB is not running.
That means that you'll have to add all folders again, but that should be the last time.
__________________________________
I'm just a user of The Bat! I don't work for Ritlabs.
 
 
 
#11
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It was a first-time clean install using the installer downloaded from the website (thebat_pro_6-7-2.msi).  At this point, though, I've completely scrubbed TB from my system - including all references in the registry - and reinstalled, to see how it goes.

If I understand your post correctly, there is supposed to be separate directories for accounts and common?  I'm not seeing that here.  I have only a Mail directory (C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\The Bat!\Mail). Inside that directory are all the files and folders for mail accounts and common.

This is true even with the clean reinstall.
Edited: cbiweb - 12 November 2014 14:41:49
 
 
 
#12
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Well I gave it a good try for over a week, and I really like this email program.  It's the best of all that I've tried.

The deal breaker is that the Common Folders keep going away.  The Account folders seem fine, but Common folders.... they don't stick around.  They don't ALL disappear, and I can get them back with ctrl+alt+Shift+L, but sometimes they don't come back; or they come back empty.

This is a bug that can't be tolerated in a business environment like mine.  Even running Maintenance Centre doesn't fix it.  All the above suggestions don't fix it.  I've never seen this type of problem in other email clients, and I'm surprised it happens here because it's been around so many years. Not like it's a new program that isn't stable.

So I'm stuck with PocoMail for now, but as I said previously, it does still work just fine.  Hopefully the few minor ticks it has on Windows 8.1 won't be a problem for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for trying to help.
 
 
 
#13
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Although I'm unable to provide help for your specific problem, I do suggest that there is something strange going on with your particular setup/operating system/hardware.../whatever.

I can assure you that I am using TB the same way as you since many years.
Dozens of email accounts and a quite deep and rather complicated tree of common folders.
It works flawlessly.

I cannot confirm any buggy behaviour. It's just working as expected and as it should.
 
 
 
#14
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Thanks, Gary.  System based problems is one possibility, but it's a one-month old Windows 8.1 laptop, so... who knows?

I put in another support ticket, and they made a suggestion that I'll try.  Hopefully it will work.  I've been testing Mozilla Thunderbird, but I just can't get myself to like it as much as The Bat!. I'll post back in a few days with my results of Support's suggestion.
 
 
 
#15
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With the bat closed, go to the data folder and make sure that your login SPECIFICALLY is listed with full permissions. You are in the administrator group and that has full permissions? Great! Add yourself specifically anyway and apply it to all objects in the container. Windows 8 has some squirrley behavior with permissions. If it stops next month (or whenever) you may have to go back and do it again.

If you still have an issue, go back, note who owns the folder and take ownership of the data folder and all objects in and beneath it
 
 
 
#16
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Thanks, Rick.  Full permissions were already set when I went in to check, but that was a good suggestion for future reference or readers of this thread.

Next, I'm going to try Support's suggestion and see how it goes.
 
 
 
#17
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Support's suggestion didn't work. :(  This is what they told me to try:

[QUOTE]...try closing The Bat! and renaming the ACCOUNT.FLB file in the root of the mail folder. Then launch The Bat! and restore the common folders via Shift+Ctrl+Alt+L The Bat! will create a new ACCOUNT.FLB file and we hope that will solve the issue.[/QUOTE]

Well, it did create a new ACCOUNT.FLB file, but when I used Shift+Ctrl+Alt+L I got a message that said "0 lost folder(s) found."  So now I'm wondering if Windows 8.1 has some issues with The Bat! ?



(The [QUOTE] bbcode doesn't work in here? :\ )
Edited: cbiweb - 17 November 2014 18:15:44
 
 
 
#18
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I can confirm that The Bat! Professional has been working fine, for me - on practically every version of the Windows 8 Series (without the issues mentioned.) ;)


cheers,
^ _ ^
Battie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.1 Update 2 (64-bit, Pro) | The Bat! Pro 6.7.2 (POP3) | MailWasher Pro 7.4.1
 
 
 
#19
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That's good to know, Battie. Right now I have all folders holding tight.  Hopefully they'll stay put, because I do like TB over any other POP3 client I've tried over the past couple weeks -- and I've tried many!
 
 
 
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