GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 435371
Exchange messages don't show up
Last modified: 2011-12-02 08:58:16 UTC
Several times recently, Evolution has suddenly stopped updating my Exchange inbox. That is, it stops accurately reflecting what's actually in the inbox -- if new messages arrive, or if I remove messages from the inbox, through some other channel, those changes do not show up in Evolution. Sometimes, working offline and then going back online makes Evolution start synchronizing again -- when I go back online, the changes that were missing suddenly appear. Tonight, this didn't work. I noticed that the folder name in my folder list actually showed correctly that there were unread messages, and showed correctly the number of unread messages, even though none of those messages were showing up in the folder listing. Disabling and re-enabling the Exchange account didn't make the missing changes show up. The only way I was able to make them show up was to exit and restart evolution.
I'm experiencing a more severe version of this problem - I'm using the following package on Fedora 8: evolution-exchange-2.12.1-1.fc8. Some of my exchange folders have just lost all, or nearly all of their messages. I've also got IMAP folders configured (to a proper IMAP server, not Microsoft) and I'm not having the problem with them. This really worried me at first, but I've checked all the folders using the Outlook web interface and all the missing messages are actually still in the folders. The version of exchange-connect that's current in Fedora 7 does not have this problem with the same folders. Like the opening report, Evolution does indicate that there are unread messages, but when you click on the folder, there may be nothing visible. It's as though they're just being filtered or something. I've got about 20 folders in all, and it's affecting about 6 of them (the ones I most often use and move things to). The only thing that allows me to see any messages is after the initial "disappearance" occurs, if I move messages into the folder those freshly moved ones are visible.
Possibly the same bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442098 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478151 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=497949 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=381351
Hello Jonathan,Nik, Can you confirm if this works good for you http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353715#c7
I don't use junk email filtering in evolution, and the email messages which I am unable to see, when this occurs, are not messages that were marked as spam.
I see the same problem as Nik in comment #1 - all mails in the Inbox folder suddenly disappear. (In reply to comment #3) > Can you confirm if this works good for you > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353715#c7 Turning off junk email checking does not help. None of the disappearing mail have been tagged as junk either. My workaround: rm -rf .evolution/mail/exchange/<account>/personal/Subfolders/Inbox Using evolution 2.12.1 in Ubuntu Gutsy.
Seeing similar stuff on evolution-2.12.3-3.fc8.i386. Some messages simply don't show in selected folders, although OWA can see them just fine.
I didn't mention that removal of .evolution/exchange and .evolution/mail/exchange fixes the problem (i.e. all folders get refreshed properly, but it does take a long time).
Some more symptoms: I saw this happening in front of my eyes just now. Everything was normal, I clicked on a mail to read it, instead of the mail I got something like "Unable to retrieve message" in the message pane. Then the status bar said something like "Rereading folder (..)" and a second after all the mails were gone. I tried grepping the source for "Rereading folder" and similiar without luck, but I'm pretty sure it was "<verb>ing folder".
I can reproduce this as well. I've tried disabling junk filters as others have suggested to no avail. I can remove the files mentioned and it lasts a couple startups then the inbox emails disappear again.
Still present in 2.22.2-0ubuntu1.2.
I am experiencing this on evolution-exchange-2.22.2 as well. It seems every couple days I start evolution, and for a brief instance it shows the contents of inbox and then it quickly disappears. Deleting the ~/.evolution/exchange and ~/.evolution/mail/exchange/* fixes it for me but causes a lengthy resync. I think I may know the cause on my end. I am lazy and leave my messages in Inbox forever. My company has a policy of automatically deleting messages from inbox on the exchange server after a certain age. It seems to go out of sync after this. Maybe that is an indicator? Also I believe I can also manually make it go out of sync by logging into web interface and reading an unread message rather than reading with evolution.
I to am noticing this, the deletion mentioned above remedies it temporarily. Would love to see a fix for this, thanks
I noticed this today when trying to read on old (last week, so not that old) mail. I'm fascinated that noone seem to do anything about this. This is a VITAL function for Linux users in a Windows dominated environment. If this doesn't work we're left to using webclients or (in my case) WTS. Ignoring this problem is essentially saying: "We don't care about trying to convert Windows users to Linux any more!" My setup: Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1 Release: 8.04 Codename: hardy evolution 2.22.3.1-0ubuntu1 evolution-common 2.22.3.1-0ubuntu1 evolution-data-server 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 evolution-data-server-common 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 evolution-exchange 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 evolution-plugins 2.22.3.1-0ubuntu1 evolution-webcal 2.21.92-0ubuntu1 libcamel1.2-11 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libebook1.2-9 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libecal1.2-7 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libedata-book1.2-2 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libedata-cal1.2-6 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libedataserver1.2-9 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libedataserverui1.2-8 2.22.3-0ubuntu2 libexchange-storage1.2-3 2.22.3-0ubuntu2
I have the same problem in Fedora 9; using 2.22.3.1-1. This is highly frustrating at the moment. Occasionally, I will even get a "You have 9 messages in Inbox" message, but when I go to look for them, they have vanished. Another workaround that *sometimes* helps is to go into the Browser access in Firefox and move all the offending messages over to another folder. Then sometimes Evolution can see them in the second folder. But again, not always, so I'm losing a lot of time every day...
I too have the same issue. Might there be a problem with .evolution/exchange/user@server/personal/subfolders/*/connector-metadata.xml ? I find <folder_size>0</folder_size> in each mail subfolder's connector file, but perhaps it is always like that... doing rm -rf on ~/.evolution/mail/exchange/user@server/personal/subfolders/Inbox fixed the problem for me, at least temporarily.
this also appears to be related or equal to Bug #154201, where a similar solution was given: exit Evolution in a terminal window enter evolution --force-shutdown backup your $HOME/.evolution ( tar cvfz myevo.tgz .evolution ) rm -rf .evolution/exchange/ .evolution/mail/exchange/ restart evolution ( it may take a few minutes to re-sync ).
oops, the above solution was #154201 in bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution
This problem has gotten much worse for me in Fedora 10 (evolution-2.24.2-1.fc10.x86_64). This is very serious and very frustrating! How can we help to debug this problem?
I just discovered this bug has been hitting me for a while today, and while cleaning up I stumbled upon some more information that may point to a fixable bug: I performed the cleanup from Comment #16 by Mark, started Evolution, and while it was "Filtering", an email came into my mailbox via Exchange, I can see it in OWA. But, the message never showed up in Evolution. Digging a little deeper, the message was downloaded to the .evolution/mail/exchange/username@server/personal/subfolders/Inbox/cache, and is in the summary file, since I can find it via grep. the ID number of the message is also in the summary-meta file. I can keep track of this message ID if anyone can help me extract some debugging information from the summary files that may help track down the issue. This was in Evolution-2.12.3-5 from Fedora 8, and evolution-exchange 2.12.3-1 also from Fedora 8 (yes, I'm a little behind...) I'll try in the near future to see if I can reproduce this with the latest version of Evolution and the connector.
I have reproduced this in debian lenny, with evolution 2.22.3.1. The entire folder disappeared after restarting evolution.Initially, the inbox showed unread mail. Restarting evolution made the inbox disappear and several new folders appear. Re-synchronising is not a long term option, as our company server is limited to 200MB mail, requiring excess mail to be downloaded locally. "Re-synching" will delete email that is only available from the local machine. Attempting to create a new folder "Inbox" fails, with the error "Folder already exists" Notably my email database, as reported by du is only 36 MB -- it can occur without an overly large database $ cat $HOME/.evolution/cache/tmp 0:1231202425:No such folder 7 0:1231202496:Error while Creating folder `personal/Inbox'. 8 0:1231202496:Folder already exists 9 0:1231202533:Error while Refreshing folder. .evolution/mail 10 0:1231202533:No such folder $ du -h --max-depth 1 .evolution/ 36K .evolution/addressbook 20K .evolution/memos 188K .evolution/cache 280K .evolution/exchange 20K .evolution/calendar 20K .evolution/tasks 36M .evolution/
I see this bug with evolution-2.24.3 and evolution-exchange-2.24.3.
I'm experiencing similar problems with Exchange server 2003, Evolution 2.24.3 using the Exchange Plugin on Ubuntu 8.10. There seems to be three issues regarding missing emails: 1. A few times a month a few emails can be seen in OWA but not in Evolution, eventually they do appear in Evolution. 2. In certain conditions users permanently loose the ability to see most mail in their Inbox. 3. The Inbox incorrectly reports that there are new messages when according to OWA there are none. Temporary fixes to the above problems respectively: 1. Exit Evolution, rm -f /home/$USER/.evolution/mail/exchange/$USER@$HOST/folders.db, Start Evolution 2. Exit Evolution, rm -f /home/$USER/.evolution/mail/exchange/$USER@$HOST/folders.db, Start Evolution 3. Exit Evolution, Start Evolution. My guess to the causes respectively are: 1. Evolution is incorrectly shut down and temporarily goes out of sync. 2.1 Evolution and Microsoft Outlook are used at the same time, or 2.2 The exchange server removes mail older than a certain date, causing Evolution to permanently go out of sync. 3. I haven't see any pattern for this one. Regarding the first issue: To make a missing email display, I can go into Outlook Web Access, move the affected email to another folder, then move it back again. Clicking Send/Receive in Evolution then displays the missing email. Right clicking on Inbox and selecting properties in Evolution shows the correct number of emails on the Exchange server, which is less than the amount shown in Evolution's inbox. Selecting view hidden messages (View/Show Hidden Messages) does not show the missing messages. It seems that the missing emails in some cases do eventually show up, but up to a few days later. My "Receiving options" configuration is : "Check new messages for Junk contents" has never been enabled and is still disabled. "Apply filters to new messages in Inbox" was enabled, I've now disabled it. "Synchronise account locally" was enabled, I've now disabled it. The problem seems to be very intermittent, I'd guess its around 1 in a hundred emails don't display on time, and if the email shows up a few hours or even a day late you might not realize there had been a problem. Regarding the second issue: Our Exchange server clears emails out of users inbox if they are older than a certain date. I generally clear out my inbox before messages get to old and I've never experienced the second issue myself. The one user that did have this problem had a very large inbox with a lot of old mail, which would have been purged at some point by exchange. This same user however was also running Outlook on a separate computer, connecting to the same Exchange account, which might have caused the problem. Possibly though its a combination of running Outlook and having an Inbox that gets cleared out by Exchange? This bug in various forms has been around for well over a year, some of the other places its been reported: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442098 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478151 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=497949 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=489236 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/247364 I've also commented on the same bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-exchange/+bug/160142 Surely the priority and severity of this bug should be higher than "normal", I would have thought losing emails in your inbox would classify as highly critical? Also the bug has been reported by dozens of people, shouldn't the status should be changed to confirmed?
I can also confirm this and quite a few other issues with the Exchange plugin. Quite a few freezes, offline/online switching doesn't seem to work with exchange (it goes into a "network error" state when you try to online it), folders not being filtered in exchange account - I have to manually select all new messages and select ctrl-y. The missing emails and a tremendously SLOW email processing should be a high priority issue. I'm running fedora 10/32bit: * evolution-2.24.5-1.fc10.i386 * evolution-conduits-2.24.5-1.fc10.i386 * evolution-data-server-2.24.5-4.fc10.i386 * evolution-data-server-devel-2.24.5-4.fc10.i386 * evolution-data-server-doc-2.24.5-4.fc10.i386 * evolution-exchange-2.24.5-1.fc10.i386 * evolution-help-2.24.5-1.fc10.i386 * evolution-perl-2.24.5-1.fc10.i386 * evolution-spamassassin-2.24.5-1.fc10.i386 * evolution-webcal-2.23.91-1.fc10.i386
Hi, I also have this problem in 2.26.1, running on Ubuntu Jaunty (9.0.4). I can confirm that removing the folders.db file from my ~/.exchange/mail/exchange/accountname/ directory did the trick, and it now appears to be working again. However, it looks like it will reoccur from other people's experience. This is quite a serious problem - it didn't show up when I sent a test email to myself, but all my emails went missing this morning, and it took me several hours to work out what the problem was. It would be better if evolution threw an error, rather than it seeming as if everything was ok :) I am trying really hard to beat my Outlook addiction, and move to Evolution, but every time I try I hit a bug...this is my third attempt :( Is there a way I can get some debugging information so I can post more when I reproduce it again? Just to clarify: - This is not a junk mail filtering issue. If it was, the mail would appear in the junk mail folder, no? If I look in OWA, they are still in the Inbox. They just don't appear in Evolution, until I delete the offline cache, and then they do. - I'm not using Outlook at the same time. - I have turned off the filters - and again, if it was to do with filters, shouldn't this mean the email was _being_ filtered? It's not being - it's still in the inbox in OWA. Perhaps a workaround is to keep deleting the folders.db file, but this isn't really an acceptable solution, because it takes forever to refresh the folders when first starting up. It's a shame there's no error - at the moment the biggest problem is me assuming nothing is wrong, and then people chasing me because I haven't received their emails... I'm happy to help debug this with a developer. I really, really want this to work properly so I can get rid of Windows :D thanks, Chris
same here, yesterday i could not get the "real" content of my inbox and my trash folder as shown in the web interface. I deleted the sqlite database folders.db and content was refreshed. There should be a button for this as workaround. I also filed a similar bug about the trash folder, but now it seems it happens with very busy folders like trash or inbox.
(In reply to comment #25) > same here, yesterday i could not get the "real" content of my inbox and my > trash folder as shown in the web interface. I deleted the sqlite database > folders.db and content was refreshed. There should be a button for this as > workaround. I also filed a similar bug about the trash folder, but now it seems > it happens with very busy folders like trash or inbox. > PS: I also have this problem in 2.26.1, running on Ubuntu Jaunty (9.0.4).
As a workaround I have mapped this script to a fairly complex keybinding so I don't accidentally hit it. This destroys cached emails but they will be refetched upon restart. #!/bin/sh /usr/lib/evolution/*/killev killall evolution-exchange-storage killall evolution-data-server rm -rfv ~/.evolution/mail/exchange/*/personal/subfolders/Inbox/ rm -rfv ~/.evolution/mail/exchange/*/folders.db rm -rfv ~/.evolution/exchange/*/personal/subfolders/Inbox/ The script is called killev and is in my path, unlike the ones built into evolution so I run the command: sh -c 'killev ; exec evolution ' And evolution vanishes and comes back with all of my email.
This seems to be a reliable way to reproduce the problem: Read Exchange mail with iPhone's Exchange connector. Sometime after that, Evo does some sort of refresh. It drops about 90% of the mail in my inbox, including about the same proportion of unread messages. There doesn't seem to be a pattern involving the age of the messages or anything else I recognize. Sometime later, Evo does another refresh and the messages all return. If I don't want to wait for that second refresh, I have to use one of the above workarounds to force a refresh. I'm not sure what happens differently at these various times to force the complete refresh, but whatever it is, it's somehow ignoring messages. Has anyone yet seen this with the MAPI connector? I haven't been using that, due to bug #579819.
Bug 581908 fix should help here in terms of missing mails.
I just had this problem occure wiht 9.10 using evolution and connecting to the exchange server. To correct it I disabled the junk email filtering option. Hope that helps those looking to get it back to working.
Can you please check again whether this issue still happens in Evolution 3.0.3 or 3.2.0 and update this report by adding a comment and changing the "Version" field? Thanks a lot.
Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of Evolution.
evolution-3.0.3-1.fc15.x86_64 I just had this happen recently. I changed from connecting to my Exchange account with exchange-connector to MAPI, then changed back. When I changed back, nearly all messages were dropped. Sometime later, after Evo did some sort of refresh, my inbox was restored. I can't set the status, but it appears this should be reopened (at least if my bug is really this one). Thanks.
(In reply to comment #33) > evolution-3.0.3-1.fc15.x86_64 > > I just had this happen recently. I changed from connecting to my Exchange > account with exchange-connector to MAPI, then changed back. When I changed > back, nearly all messages were dropped. Sometime later, after Evo did some > sort of refresh, my inbox was restored. > When you change account from MAPI to Exchange, evolution would fetch all messages again because MAPI and Exchange are different providers and maintain their mail cache separately. Once evolution fetched all messages, they did appear in your Inbox. I don't see anything wrong. Did i miss anything ?
(In reply to comment #34) > (In reply to comment #33) > > evolution-3.0.3-1.fc15.x86_64 > > > > I just had this happen recently. I changed from connecting to my Exchange > > account with exchange-connector to MAPI, then changed back. When I changed > > back, nearly all messages were dropped. Sometime later, after Evo did some > > sort of refresh, my inbox was restored. > > > > When you change account from MAPI to Exchange, evolution would fetch all > messages again because MAPI and Exchange are different providers and maintain > their mail cache separately. Once evolution fetched all messages, they did > appear in your Inbox. I don't see anything wrong. Did i miss anything ? Yes, here's the sequence: - Connected with OWA. All messages listed in OWA account. - Disable OWA and enable MAPI. All messages re-fetched in MAPI account. - Disable MAPI and enable OWA. During the next sync, most messages disappear from OWA account. When that happens, I can watch as the count of messages in Inbox decrements from 1000's (yes, I'm bad about deleting or filing) to 10's. - Sometime later (on the order of hours), messages in OWA account reappear during a sync.