This has been a most disheartening transition for me.
Let me start by saying: "Perhaps I did not read the pop ups thoroughly enough before proceding, but then again, maybe the important info could have been BIGGER and BOLDER".
When I get notified of new TB updates, I just click, click, click and install them. There weren't any notifications, that I saw this time, about licensing during my upgrade that would have led me to believe I would become an unregistered user if I did the upgrade. I am now an unregistered user.
I did see this when I was prompted to go 4.1.9:
"If you have a registration key for The Bat! version 3 or earlier version, you can upgrade it online."
But this led me to believe it was just a change in reg code, not an upgrade that needed to be paid for.
So here I am, using 4.1.7, I have a new message base, and thousands of missing e-mail messages from the bat. The messages are not physically missing, just not being shown in the bat.
The inbox for all 50 account was missing. This completely shocked me. For the most frequently used accounts, I muscled my way to recovery by renaming the inbox for the account to "inbx" then doing a Lost folder check which found the new "INBX" and then doing a drag and drop to the regular inbox.
I cannot do this for the other 46 accounts, which are important, just not URGENT. In addition to the INBOX issue for EVERY account, I have the SAME problem with hundreds of folders across the different accounts.
With more than 3 million messages across the accounts, (just over 2 million in one account) you can imaging how daunting the task will be to manually correct this.
I think the missing folder and message problem should be addressed by the bat! team as there are so many people indicating the same problem.
One thing I noticed just moments ago is that if the bat! doesn’t see a folder, the filters won’t work. In another post, someone was mentioning lost mail, the response was "a bug in your filtering", perhaps, he, like me, has been using the same unaltered filter for years, and now it is not working because the bat! has lost touch with the filter's destination folder. Perhaps it is not a problem with his filtering at all.
In my big account, there are more than 600 folders, each is populated by an incoming or outgoing filter. It will take me weeks to figure out which folders the bat! has decided not to use and go through the name change / drag and drop routine to make sure I am back up and running.
While looking through the forums for some info on another topic, I couldn't help but notice all the people that were talking about switching to another mail client, one in particular was mentioning a way to move messages and folder trees to Thunderbird automatically. I spent time reading those posts and thought "Wow, the bat! has been good, not great, but good to me for years and years, these people must be experiencing unique problems." I couldn't understand the desire to move away from the bat!.
I understand now.
My problem is that I have been using the bat! so long, I feel like my hands are tied. It would take months to get everything moved. I have more than 2000 filters.
Someone in another post mentioned that if the bat is going to alter the message base, it should force a back up. I agree. I did not do a backup, and this has not caused my pain, as my messages are all still there. But I think the bat team may fail to realize just how much data their software is in control of. Message base corruption could be catastrophic for some. As an IT professional, I always back up customer data before I alter it, It doesn’t matter if the customer wants me to or not. I refuse to be blamed for data loss. The bat team should follow this lead.
So, I sit here dumbfounded now. To my surprise, I have an unregistered version of the bat. I have missing messages that total more than I may ever know, and I have seen that I am not alone in my situation.
I very much feel let down by the team this time. But since they have always done a good job in the past, I am going to see if they provide a solution to the missing folder and message issue before I decide what to do.
Sincerely,
Crippled but alive.
Let me start by saying: "Perhaps I did not read the pop ups thoroughly enough before proceding, but then again, maybe the important info could have been BIGGER and BOLDER".
When I get notified of new TB updates, I just click, click, click and install them. There weren't any notifications, that I saw this time, about licensing during my upgrade that would have led me to believe I would become an unregistered user if I did the upgrade. I am now an unregistered user.
I did see this when I was prompted to go 4.1.9:
"If you have a registration key for The Bat! version 3 or earlier version, you can upgrade it online."
But this led me to believe it was just a change in reg code, not an upgrade that needed to be paid for.
So here I am, using 4.1.7, I have a new message base, and thousands of missing e-mail messages from the bat. The messages are not physically missing, just not being shown in the bat.
The inbox for all 50 account was missing. This completely shocked me. For the most frequently used accounts, I muscled my way to recovery by renaming the inbox for the account to "inbx" then doing a Lost folder check which found the new "INBX" and then doing a drag and drop to the regular inbox.
I cannot do this for the other 46 accounts, which are important, just not URGENT. In addition to the INBOX issue for EVERY account, I have the SAME problem with hundreds of folders across the different accounts.
With more than 3 million messages across the accounts, (just over 2 million in one account) you can imaging how daunting the task will be to manually correct this.
I think the missing folder and message problem should be addressed by the bat! team as there are so many people indicating the same problem.
One thing I noticed just moments ago is that if the bat! doesn’t see a folder, the filters won’t work. In another post, someone was mentioning lost mail, the response was "a bug in your filtering", perhaps, he, like me, has been using the same unaltered filter for years, and now it is not working because the bat! has lost touch with the filter's destination folder. Perhaps it is not a problem with his filtering at all.
In my big account, there are more than 600 folders, each is populated by an incoming or outgoing filter. It will take me weeks to figure out which folders the bat! has decided not to use and go through the name change / drag and drop routine to make sure I am back up and running.
While looking through the forums for some info on another topic, I couldn't help but notice all the people that were talking about switching to another mail client, one in particular was mentioning a way to move messages and folder trees to Thunderbird automatically. I spent time reading those posts and thought "Wow, the bat! has been good, not great, but good to me for years and years, these people must be experiencing unique problems." I couldn't understand the desire to move away from the bat!.
I understand now.
My problem is that I have been using the bat! so long, I feel like my hands are tied. It would take months to get everything moved. I have more than 2000 filters.
Someone in another post mentioned that if the bat is going to alter the message base, it should force a back up. I agree. I did not do a backup, and this has not caused my pain, as my messages are all still there. But I think the bat team may fail to realize just how much data their software is in control of. Message base corruption could be catastrophic for some. As an IT professional, I always back up customer data before I alter it, It doesn’t matter if the customer wants me to or not. I refuse to be blamed for data loss. The bat team should follow this lead.
So, I sit here dumbfounded now. To my surprise, I have an unregistered version of the bat. I have missing messages that total more than I may ever know, and I have seen that I am not alone in my situation.
I very much feel let down by the team this time. But since they have always done a good job in the past, I am going to see if they provide a solution to the missing folder and message issue before I decide what to do.
Sincerely,
Crippled but alive.