Yes, it still works fine with the Hotmail account.

I used to have an installation that worked correctly with the SmarterMail account, and that's what I no longer have. I would have used it to compare everything that I could about the two setups.

Thanks for your help up to now. I'll play with it for another week or so, and then go searching for a different email app if I still can't get it to work.

The MSF file is where most of this information is stored for each folder. It sounds like the MSF is being blown away or deleted for some reason when you select that account. This is off the wall. But have you checked the physical disk for errors?

Thanks, Matt, for the reply. That is helpful, and it makes much more sense than having it stored in session.json.

I've not had a lot of time to investigate this further (and probably won't for a couple of weeks, due to lots of "life happening"). When I get a chance, I'll learn the format of the MSF files so that I can understand what might be happening.

In the meantime, I don't think that this is a case of file corruption. I've installed new instances of Thunderbird several times now. I've also forced recreation of the INBOX.msf file a few times, which ensures that the files are not stored in the same area of the drive. The problem always occurs, and it always seems to be related to the Inbox. If I never visit the inbox, then all of the other folders work fine. After viewing the inbox, each of my other folders reverts back to the default columns a fraction of a second after I open them.

I believe (pretty strongly at this point) that there is a bug here, related to some interaction between SmarterMail and Thunderbird, and possibly Kubuntu 22.04 LTS. The problem only occurs on my account hosted on a SmarterMail server. It does not occur on my old Hotmail account (I connect to both accounts via IMAP).

And finally, I set up Thunderbird on another physical machine, also running Kubuntu 22.04 LTS, and it reproduces there exactly as it does on my main machine. Unfortunately, my main machine was the last one that I upgraded. I'll set up another machine with a different distro to see if it happens there, but as above, it won't be for a few weeks.

-Wade

Hi Wade and all,

I'm the MacOS guy with the exact same problem, which seems to be absolutely connected to the relationship between Thunderbird Inbox and SmarterMail.

Spoke to my web host about this. SmarterMail is the only mail server option they offer, and they say the problem must be a Thunderbird bug.

Last week I posted the issue at <smartertools.com>, the developer of SmarterMail. So far no replies. But since I am not a "client" to smartertools (my web host is), I can't get direct customer service. I'm at the mercy of their user forum, just like at Mozilla.

To fix it, we need to find a MacOS or Kubuntu 22.04 LTS user who doesn't have the issue.

Tucker

Update -- Just got off the phone with a SmarterTools rep, who was very supportive and helpful.

I learned that my web host is running SmarterMail build 7699 (Jan 2021), which is not the current version. May or may not be part of the problem.

She is going to ask their support team to test the current SmarterMail version with Thunderbird under the two operating systems exhibiting the Inbox issue.

I'll report any news.

Tucker

Thanks for the information, Tucker.

It's good to see that I am not the only one. I also opened a ticket today with my ISP. We'll see if they can help as well.

-Wade

Wade, can you tell me what version or build of SmarterMail you are using?

Tucker

I have some more information on this. It is not as simple as "SmarterMail accounts exhibit the problem, but accounts on other servers don't".

I've been working with my ISP on this. They have unsuccessfully attempted to reproduce the problem with a clean install on a Windows machine. I had a few more back-and-forth messages, since I never claimed that the problem existed on Windows. Eventually, they concluded that it's a Thunderbird problem on my local machine.

I was preparing an email with my response to that, when I decided to dig deeper.

I installed Thunderbird on a Windows machine, fully expecting that the problem would not reproduce there...but it did. I've now seen the exact same behavior on multiple Kubuntu machines and a Windows machine. So the operating system seems to not be a part of the problem.

As a test, I created a new email account on the SmarterMail server. I created a test folder and set a few messages to the new account. I moved a message from Inbox on the new account, to the test folder. That should have been everything needed to reproduce the problem...but it did not reproduce on the new account.

At this point, I have a single Thunderbird client installation with three different accounts. Two of the accounts are on my ISP's SmarterMail server, and one of them is on Hotmail (presumably an Exchange server). Of these three accounts, only my daily use account on the SmarterMail server reproduces the problem. The test account works fine.

I have compared all of the Thunderbird settings between the two accounts, and they are identical on my side. The only difference is the account to which they are connected, yet one works and one exhibits the problem.

This seems conclusive to me that there is something specific to my email account that is causing the problem. It cannot be anything on the machine or Thunderbird instance, because both accounts are set up within the same client.

I have asked my ISP if there is a more comprehensive way to compare the accounts than just looking at the server settings in Thunderbird. If there is no way to find the difference responsible, I have asked them if there is a way to create a new account for my daily email account, and then migrate all of my data over.

I'll post another update when I have more information.

-Wade

Oh, and here is the SmarterMail version, as reported by the web client:

SmarterMail Enterprise Build 8251 (Aug 4, 2022)

-Wade

Quick update:

The only difference that my ISP has found is that I have Exchange ActiveSync enabled on my main account, but not the test account.

I tried disabling it on my main account (and re-setup a client by adding it as a new account). It did not fix the behavior, but I wanted to mention it here as something that I looked at.

-Wade

You've been busy, Wade!

I was inspired by your experiments to try one myself, but no joy.

The test account I made (alt email account on the same SmarterMail server, same MacOS Thunderbird client) exhibits the exact same problem we have been observing.

Given that you are using imap, I would encourage you to install the beta described at https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/download/beta/ ... in parallel with your current version. To do so, you will need install the beta in its own program directory and not overwrite your current version.

We might then know whether the problem is already solved in a newer version.

I wanted to give an update on this.

My ISP has been doing all that they can to help me. They had me create a video showing the problem, and they forwarded it to the SmarterMail folks. Unfortunately, the SmarterMail folks pretty much blew it off as a known issue with the client. They gave me a couple of links to issues where the column order was reset - but the circumstances were totally unlike what we are seeing. What we are seeing here is something different.

So my ISP created a test account and copied my content into it. I was hoping that would work correctly, but the same problem happened. That means that something in my content is causing Thunderbird to reset the columns.

Unfortunately, I'm nearly at the end of the line on pursuing this. I'll probably start looking for another email client. My needs are modest, and I want something simple and reliable.

I have one, last ditch effort that I might pursue later. My ISP sent me the network traffic between my client and their server during the above test with the new account. I've not looked at the IMAP protocol for about 25 years, so I need to pretty much learn it from scratch if I want to do this. I also looked at the MSF files, where the column information is sent. Unfortunately, they use the Mork file format. It's an old, and rather strange format. There is no documentation for it, just some reference implementations (which don't work with the Thunderbird files).

Best of luck to anyone else who's seeing this problem.