Hallo M.D., On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 16:39:56 -0500GMT (18-10-02, 23:39 +0200GMT, where I live), you wrote:
JPCMD> I have received two emails from a friend that cause TB to freeze JPCMD> completely. I cannot even delete them, TB is so frozen. Once I was First thing you do is to close TB and zip both the messages.tbb and the messages.tbi files in the folder that causes TB to freeze. Since this is obviously a bug, you attach it to a mail addressed to the developers (in the menu: help - feedback - bug report) so it can be fixed in a next version. That won't help you right now, but it's a start. (Of course when that folder contains real sensitive info, you could consider not to do so, but that's up to you.) Now the cure of your problem. I'll mention a few possibilities: 1) Close TB. Run Scandisk on the drive with your message base. There could be a disk problem. When Scandisk reports errors and fixes them, try TB again and see if it is fixed. If not, no harm's done. 2) Close TB , delete the messages.tbi file, your index could be corrupt. When you start TB, it creates a new index file for the folder with a missing one. If your problem is cured, it probably had nothing to do with the e-mails from your friend. This action (deleting the messages.tbi) will cause all messages deleted after the last time you compressed that folder to show up again. (I'll explain this at the bottom of my message.) 3) The third option. This means you've got a real problem. Close TB (All my options start with that. <g>) Move the messages.tbb from your problem folder to a different location (move it, don't delete it, cause this is the file containing your messages) you can move the matching .tbi or delete it, that's up to you. Now start TB and the messages in the other folders can be accessed again. Now you're still missing the messages in your problem folder. OK. Copy the replaced messages.tbi to a file called messages.txt. Since the messages.tbb is in plain text, you can open it with notepad (or whatever text-editor), provided it's not to big for it. Now search for the suspect messages (new messages are appended to end of the file) and cut them from your messages.txt. Save your messages.txt as plain text!!! Create a new text file and paste your suspect messages in it, so that you have copies of them. Start TB, create a new folder in it. Close TB. Copy your messages.txt to the new folder as messages.tbb and don't forget that the messages.tbi in that folder doesn't match the .tbb, so deltete it. Start TB. If you haven't made any mistakes, you can now view the other messages. (Unless another message is the real culprit.) Copy the messages you want to keep to their folders. Now you can try the same with the two messages you've saved in the new textfile. Remember that all manual manipulations with the tbi or tbb files ought to be done with TB closed. ** Now something completely different. You asked your question by replying to a message on this list and changing the subject. You shouldn't do that, because: The Bat is able to thread messages properly, in order to see what I mean, just select the folder where you're storing the messages from this list. Go to the menu: view - view threads by - references. Now you'll see that all messages are lined up after the message to which they're first, second (or whatever) level replies to. You started what's essentially a new thread by replying to another message. That means it shows up as listed in another thread. Since people sometimes skip messages in threads they don't consider interesting (for lack of time). They might skip your message too, since they're not aware of the newly started thread. So next time you'd do yourself a favor by sending a new message in stead of a reply, because you're reaching a larger audience and one of those might have the answer you've been waiting for. ** Since I promised to explain why your deleted messages return from the dustbin after deleting the messages.tbi, here's the explanation: TB manages your messages as a database or to be more precisely: stores them in a database. This database is organized per folder. Each folder has a messages.tbb and a messages.tbi file. The real messages are stored in the messages.tbb (The Bat Base) and to shorten the access time to the messages additional info is stored in the messages.tbi (The Bat Index). This additional info can be a flag you've set to the message, the info whether you've replied to it or whether you deleted the message. Deleted? you'll say. Yes. When you delete a message, TB flags the message as deleted in the index file, but leaves it in the actual message base. That's because setting a bit in the index is faster than rewriting the full messages.tbb. In the folder menu you'll see an option 'browse deleted messages' where you can view and undelete your deleted messages. Will TB never delete messages from the messages.tbb? Yes, it can do that, but that's called 'compressing', you'll see an option 'compress' in the folder menu. This means that TB will rewrite both your .tbb and .tbi files and what's deleted is lost 'forever and ever'. You can also compress folders automatically on closing TB. Since version 1.60 you can set this for all folders in the account settings. And in the folder properties you can do this per folder (compress on exit). TB has also a 'purge'option. In the folder properties you can setup a maximum number of messages or a maximum age for the messages in that folder. That's called purging. Purging is the same as deleting, the message is flagged as deleted, until you compress the folder. Purging can be done automatically and manually (from the folder menu) Note that moving a folder (manual or by filter) will create the message in the new folder and mark it as deleted in the source folder. Now you'll see why it is important to compress your folders, especially those that are seeing lots of messages being deleted or moved. (Your inbox is an example of them.) -- Groetjes, Roelof ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.61 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
