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Tags in Thunderbird have disappeared after upgrade to 23.0.0
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We upgraded to 23.0.0 over the weekend. Today users that utilize tags in Thunderbird are reporting that their tags have disappeared. The release notes listed the following item under "CHANGES AND NEW FEATURES":
[6984] Added IMAP server support for keyword flags. This allows email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird to store Message Tags on the server, which lets you see tags set in one client in another instance of the client.
But it doesn't say it will wipe out existing tags in Thunderbird nor does it mention a way to preserve or restore tags.
I've got several angry users. Has anyone else encountered this or have a way to restore the tags?
Thanks for your help!
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Tyler Staff
Hi,
I had sent you a response to the email support ticket earlier today. I was able to reproduce the issue and have submitted a report to our development team to review.
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Upgraded to 23, but was worried about the chance of losing existing tags after reading about the new feature, so it was the first thing I checked after the update was applied. Soon as I realized that this was indeed the case, I stopped the service, and quickly restored the previous version (entire folder had been copied and ready).
Though thunderbird tags syncing is a long awaited and highly welcome feature, the "I've got several angry users" could have also been my case. For the moment, just can't update because of that.
Regarding old tags, I'd guess that if there is no backup, from where the old msf files can be retrieved, they are unfortunately lost (I do feel your pain btw...).
If old msf files do exist, then you 'll have to revert to the previous mdaemon version, and restore your msf files/profile from the backup.
The reason your tags were lost (& why alt-N should have put a big warning on this feature) i'd suppose is the server->client single way sync. For example, if you delete mails using webmail, any local copies you may have in thunderbird will be deleted soon as you reopen the app - a client syncs everything from the server, and not the other way around, unless such an operation is explicitly defined (uploading or deleting msgs, setting flags/tags...).
Probably the only way to retain existing tags would be some thunderbird add-on that would e.g. force uploading the tags from client to server if no tags are stored serverside.
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Jonathan Staff
Yes, the tags are lost for that reason. When Thunderbird sees that the IMAP server supports keyword flags, it syncs the tags from the server to the client, and since no tags have been set on the server, the messages will have no tags in the client.
I was hoping Thunderbird still had its local message tags data somewhere, but it appears to be gone. It's no longer present in the msf file after Thunderbird has done its sync.
It's too bad that Thunderbird does this. We want MDaemon's IMAP server to support keyword flags, but if it does, Thunderbird loses its local tags. I don't see anything we can do on the MDaemon side to avoid this, other than to disable keyword flags support. Thunderbird would need changing to handle this better.
Here is one way to preserve the Thunderbird tags, but it's a very manual process.
- While still on MDaemon 22, for each Thunderbird user, create local folders in Thunderbird (folders in "Local Folders") for each of the IMAP folders that you want to preserve message tags
- Move all the tagged messages from the IMAP folders to the local folders
- After the above has been done for everyone, update the server to MDaemon 23
- Move the messages back from the local folders to the IMAP folders. When Thunderbird uploads them it will set the tags on the server
Here's another idea that does not involve uploading/replacing messages on the server. But this is even more of a manual process and could be very tedious and error-prone.
- While still on MDaemon 22, for each Thunderbird user, go to Account Settings, Server Settings, and change the Server Name to a non-existing hostname, so it cannot connect
- After the above has been done for everyone, update the server to MDaemon 23
- Create a new IMAP account in Thunderbird, using the same settings as the previous account (but with the correct server hostname). Optionally change its Account Name so you'll be able to easily tell this one apart from the original account
- Download the messages in the new account. They will have no tags
- Assign tags to the messages in the new account's folders using the old account's folders for reference. You can open the folders in new tabs to make it easy to flip between them
- Once all done, you can remove the new account, correct the Server Name in the old account, and when it syncs it will get the tags that had been set in the new account
If anyone can think of a better or easier way to do this please let us know!
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As things are, I'd highly suggest urgently releasing an update that would have the tag support feature disabled by default. A per-account toggling on/off this feature might also be worth considering (e.g. off for existing accounts, on for new ones).
From the very short time I had to experiment with v23 before having to revert, the second feature advertised (Improved the IMAP server's performance when opening large mail folders.) seemed like an understatement - with large mailboxes, accessing files was tediously slow pre 23, with 23 it was almost instant. Not being able to upgrade to v23+ to avoid losing existing tags means we will be missing out all current and future fixes/improvements/features.
Regarding the methods suggested, in our case they won't work - too many accounts, folders/public folders for manual processing.
Additionally, we are using a custom post-processing engine that replaces duplicate mails with hardlinks (intercepting queues,hasing and placing to inboxes of group members links rather than actual mail copies). The approaches suggested involve copying the mails - linked files would be replaced with actual files, which, at the next periodic scan, the engine would replace with links again, leading to losing not only tags, but also the read stage of each message.
I can't see any way to really address this issue that doesn't involve (a significant amount of) coding. Building a thunderbird addon as mentioned on the original reply, or an msf parser that would then recreate the imapx.mrk files (if not mistaken, this is where tags are stored) would be too much work for such a specialized one/off task.
After sharing these thoughts, -as usually is the case- I'm returning to the initial suggestion:
Please release a version that has tag support off by default - ideally off for existing accounts, and on for new ones. Such an option would also work well with something similar to what you have suggested : create a new account, copy everything from old to new (tags should be copied as well, right?) then either remove the old account and rename the new, or -even simpler- toggle the tags feature on for the now empty account, move everything back, and finally delete the new/temp account.
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Tyler Staff
Thank you for your feedback. I've changed my original report to our developers in to a feature request to implement an option to enable/disable the IMAP server support for keyword flags.
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are we are talking about Thunderbird's tag functionality, not read/unread IMAP flags, right?
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Tyler Staff
@Luca
Correct, we're referring to the following addition to MDaemon 23.0.0, as mentioned by the release notes.
[6984] Added IMAP server support for keyword flags. This allows email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird to store Message Tags on the server, which lets you see tags set in one client in another instance of the client.
MDaemon 23.0.2 included an update to the feature as a result of this forum post to be able to disable/enable IMAP keyword flag support.
[26778] IMAP keyword flags support can now be enabled or disabled via the setting [Special] IMAPKeywordFlags=Yes/No in \MDaemon\App\MDaemon.ini. IMAP keyword flags are disabled by default when updating MDaemon from a version before 23, to avoid the potential loss of message tags in Thunderbird mail clients. When Thunderbird connects to an IMAP server that supports keyword flags, it overwrites its local message tags with tags read from the server, which are initially blank. IMAP keyword flags are enabled by default for new installs and when updating from version 23.0.0.
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Thank you. is it the tags only a Thunderbird functionality or an open standard supported by other email clients ?
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Tyler Staff
@Luca
Any client that supports IMAP tags/keywords, not just Thunderbird. eM Client, for example, can also store message tags on the server.
