Ken wrote:
I have a 93 year old stepmother living 1000 miles from where I live. She actually does amazingly well on the computer and Internet, but occasionally has problems. Sometimes it is inadvertently clicking on something, and that changing the way her browser or mail works. She is using the latest version of SeaMonkey, as am I. When she encounters a problem, I get her on the phone and while both of us are on the computer try to picture what she is encountering, and see if I can correct her problem. Listed below is her latest problem and her description of it: ______________ "I have a question. When I am reading my new emails, the note appears, "Compact Now?" I just discovered if I say yes it deletes all the messages that I have read, and I did not want them deleted. In fact, I think that may have been why I lost all those emails, because I thought I was supposed to say yes, that it was a good thing to do. I have not been saying yes, but today I decided that maybe I should "compact"---whatever that means!!!!!!!!!!, and that is when I couldn't find the email I had just opened. Do they go to Trash?" ______________ In her text above she cites "those Emails" from a previous incident where she lost her messages in ALL folders, based upon her comments. I intend to call her again tonight and walk her through the settings for her SeaMonkey Email program and see if she has something set that could explain why her messages in her INBOX were moved or deleted when she compacted her folders. I also intend to ask her if she allowed the compacting to complete before she did something else?Does anyone have a possible explanation as to how messages could have been moved or deleted during the compacting of folders?? I feel confident that she did something or has set something that caused it, since I have been using SeaMonkey for years and have never experienced that type of problem. Thanks.
I called her tonight and I am not sure that her problem will never happen again, but I did discover several facts that might explain why she encountered the problem:
I first had her open the "Folder Properties" from the "Edit" menu and do a "repair folder." It took almost FIVE minutes to repair the Inbox. Since it took that long, I asked how many messages she had in the Inbox folder? She replied that she only had about twenty since she had lost most of them.
I then had her view the contents of the Sent folder thinking that when she went back to the Inbox folder her files might have returned. I asked her how many messages were in the Sent folder? She said 2000!!!! When I picked myself off the floor, I told her she needed to keep her folders contents at a much lower level.
I compared the settings for my Email component to those of hers, and there was nothing of substance that could have accounted for her problem.
Next since the repair of the Inbox folder took so long, I asked her if she was waiting for the compacting to finish before she did something else? She said "No." I told her to wait until the message "Done compacting" appeared at the bottom before doing another task in the future.
So in the end, I did not get her original messages restored. I feel there is a good possibility that having too many messages in the folders and not waiting for the compacting to finish might be a factor. We shall see. Thanks to all who contributed with replies.
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