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TB Add-On "Edit Email Subject" has lost its data file. How to get help?

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After I added a TB Add-On named "Edit Email Subject 2.0.3" (EES) from French developer Jisse44, I used the Add-on for a number of months without a problem.

Specifically, I edited all the message headers for one of my email boxes to provide a clearer view of each message's content, and the EES edited file has become extremely important.

Yesterday, however, when I started TB, my EES edited file for the header had disappeared, and I see only the default TB message header-- not my EES edited version.

In conversations with users, developer Jisse44 has said his header edit database is stored locally, not with a server. But that leaves me to wonder how to restore the edited EES header database, itself-- (1) where to find it and (2) how to restore it. If the file is corrupt, then (3) how to rebuild it.

After I added a TB Add-On named "Edit Email Subject 2.0.3" (EES) from French developer Jisse44, I used the Add-on for a number of months without a problem. Specifically, I edited all the message headers for one of my email boxes to provide a clearer view of each message's content, and the EES edited file has become extremely important. Yesterday, however, when I started TB, my EES edited file for the header had disappeared, and I see only the default TB message header-- not my EES edited version. In conversations with users, developer Jisse44 has said his header edit database is stored locally, not with a server. But that leaves me to wonder how to restore the edited EES header database, itself-- (1) where to find it and (2) how to restore it. If the file is corrupt, then (3) how to rebuild it.

All Replies (7)

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION--

Developer says-- 1- Changes are done into local TB messages database, not into the message (Subject from Header doesn't change). 2- Changes are directly into header, so it is imap compatible

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Thunderbird maintains an index, which some call a database, that displays email information in the user interface. It is not intended to be permanent and is problematical enough that the user interface has a repair button to rebuild the relevant MSF file.

Most help links you get when you google Thunderbird problems also recommend you delete those files to cure many issues.

The information in the MSF file is most assuredly local. It is also not somewhere I would choose to store critical information as Thunderbird sees it more as a cache to be refreshed that an actual store.

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Matt said

... It is not intended to be permanent and is problematical enough that the user interface has a repair button to rebuild the relevant MSF file....

Understood-- the file is not designed to be permanent. So any use I get from EES is accidental, meaning until the next accident. Like building anything in the temp file folder, except worse.

However, I may have a recovery option for the short term, in that I have a few-days'-old image of the system on which TB ran, and have determined the local folder on which EES may have kept the data for this email box (account). This folder is associated exclusively with the account at issue. By restoring that folder, could I restore the data kept by EES?

You mention a rebuild button for the UI, but I found nothing but the button labeled "Options" under Tools/ Add-0ns/ Extensions/ EditEmail Subject 2.0.3. That button produced only a dialogue box titled "EditEmailSubject Settings", with a (check-marked) checkbox and subtext "Only local changes (Will only change local Thunderbird index database)".

Is restoration of the folder my most direct recovery option? I would like to recover the specific files, but restoring the entire folder is definitely acceptable.

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Select the affected folder, right-click, Properties, Repair Folder. Or manually delete the associated msf file.

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Zenos said

Select the affected folder, right-click, Properties, Repair Folder. Or manually delete the associated msf file.

Sorry, Zenos, but no joy. Found no option under Properties to repair, so I turned to your alternative suggestion, to delete the MSF.

Unfortunately, although I deleted the MSF, I got no return of the annotated phone call list. Fortunately, I did save a BAK file of the current version of the MSF (after the original MSF had been trashed), and that MSF returned to me the annotations I had made since the original loss.

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alphaa10000 said

... However, I may have a recovery option for the short term, in that I have a few-days'-old image of the system on which TB ran, and have determined the local folder on which EES may have kept the data for this email box (account). This folder is associated exclusively with the account at issue. By restoring that folder, could I restore the data kept by EES? ...

As it turned out, I was able to restore the missing data (from the MSF local "database"). From my system image, I restored only the TB folder specific to the email account inbox at issue. In my case, it was a folder number 14 (see attached image for more explanation).

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To Matt and Zenos-- thank you for your help, which oriented me enough to the actual problem that I could do what needed to be done.