Thunderbird saves partial drafts - even when I SAVE the whole message
I'm a writer. In keeping with the Law of Primacy, my first work is usually my best work (after a few tweaks). I recently had to write an email response to someone for the Darling Bride and me.
I waxed poetic and wrote an incredibly diplomatic response to a most unpleasant situation. After completing the entire message down to our signatures, I selected "File" and "Save" to make sure it was all saved in the Drafts folder. That way, I could open it on another device and read the draft to her.
Imagine my shock when I opened it, only to find that the draft stopped in the middle of a word - while I was correcting a typo - and didn't save anything after that! Frantic, I went back to the computer I used to write it, hoping the entire email was at least saved locally. Nope! The draft stopped in the middle of the message, even though I had saved the entire thing.
Perhaps this isn't high priority for a lot of users... but for those few of us, it's a critical, fatal flaw that has to be resolved. I can't even imagine that I did anything wrong: I saved the message before exiting; and opened to find half of it missing. I love the idea of Thunderbird and its privacy features, compared with the data-mining big names. But I can't afford to lose data! This was a personal response, thankfully, and not related to my work as a writer and author. However, I have to trust my email client with the data I save to it. Any hints to prevent this are greatly appreciated.
All Replies (5)
Are your drafts stored in an IMAP folder or in Local Folders? If it's the former, and you don't need to access drafts from other devices, saving them in Drafts on Local Folders is probably a more reliable option. Look in the Copies & Folders section of Account Settings (for each account).
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From your letter it appears that your drafts were saved and you later went to look at them in Thunderbird, where half of your draft was still present? You never found it either?
Greetings Firefox volunteer
I looked in every folder - local and IMAP. The draft was in the IMAP folder for that email account... it's as if it had auto-saved halfway through but then ignored my instruction to save it at the end.
It was a response way late getting out anyway: so I just rewrote & finished it on another device and didn't touch it until the Darling Bride approved and I sent it. Wasn't about to lose it again!
G. Lamar Wilkie said
I looked in every folder - local and IMAP. The draft was in the IMAP folder for that email account... it's as if it had auto-saved halfway through but then ignored my instruction to save it at the end.
Or your antivirus messed about so long scanning the encrypted traffic that the connection timed out before the save completed so you got half of it.
Or something blocked the saving of the temp file to the local temp directory when it was written, so only part of it was there to send over IMAP.
Or you shut down the internet or the computer before the save completed. Network is not as fast as a local save. Especially with the latest crop of antivirus products helping things to a snail pace.
Yes, I am cynical about imap and antivirus. But after 10 or 15 year of listening to folk complain about things not working, being slow, or as in your case, incomplete and finding after a time that the antivirus was the issue does tend o breed that attitude without real investigation.
I recognize the challenge in troubleshooting this without being there, looking at the screen and checking settings: I had no idea it would take seconds (or minutes) to save a simple email to an IMAP server! The only anti-virus I use is Windows Defender, which is built into Win10. I have learned my lesson, however, and will save first to a local folder and then to IMAP. It may not be as convenient, but at least I won't have to rewrite things. Thanks to all for your help!
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