*Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

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Francis17
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Jul 03, 2018 12:14 am

*Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by Francis17 »

Okay this is a new one on me. PP is displaying only *some* of the messages in my Zoho inbox.
All of the messages appear when viewing the inbox through webmail.
All of the messages appear when viewing the inbox through Interlink (a terrific improvement on Thunderbird).
But when viewing the inbox through PP, only two messages from last month show up.
PP and Interlink are both talking to imapPro.zoho.com:993 with SSL/TLS; changing to imap.zoho.com makes no difference.
Started testing with PP 5.0.4.9004 on Windows 8.1.

Things already checked:
- Updated to 5.1.2; made no difference.
- AntiJunk plugin is Unchecked / Off.
- Retrieval option is set to Entire Message.
- Hide messages from *All Accounts* is set to None.
- Sent myself a new message; it was displayed in IL but not in PP.
- Deleted the data.db file and re-started PP; made no difference.
- Created a new PP account for the mailbox; made no difference.
- Used [IMAP Folders] to Auto-Create a new PP account pointing to a sub-folder *under* the inbox; Moved the "missing" messages from Inbox to that folder using Interlink; "Check mail" on the sub account, then PP displayed the messages just fine.
- Moved the messages from the sub-folder back up to Inbox; "Check mail" on both the new account and the main Zoho account; the messages disappeared from *All Accounts*.
- Copied one of the visible messages to the sub-folder using Interlink; "Check mail" on the sub account, then PP displayed that message just fine.

Again, Interlink and webmail both correctly saw all the messages, regardless of what folder they were in. PP ignored some messages, but only when they were in the Inbox.

At this point I want compare the IMAP logs between PP and Interlink, to see any discrepancies in the status from the server like "SENT: * 7 EXISTS[nl]* 0 RECENT[nl]*" Unfort I don't know how to do that. Anything else to try?
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mjs
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Re: *Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by mjs »

If you haven't already, you could try looking for potential hidden messages by temporarily displaying any possible hidden messages. To do this temporarily (from the main PP menu) go to "Messages" > then uncheck "Enable display filters" (you may get a dialog explaining what this does assuming you haven't requested that the dialog not be displayed again in the past). Then do some testing to check to see if missing messages are now listed in your PP In-box. Don't forget to enable the "Enable display filters..." option (add check mark) option again after testing this out.

If this doesn't help - you might try checking to see if you may have restricted the number of messages that can be displayed in your PP In-box. To do this go to "Tools" > "Options" > "Message Retrieval" to see if you have something other than "0" in the "Max number of messages to retrieve" ("0" represents no limit). This same setting can also be account specific that can be checked by editing your PP account(s) to check for this in the "Advanced" page at the bottom. Note: if the "Advanced" page is not listed when you edit the PP account then you will first need to enable "Advanced options" under "Tools" > "Options" > "General" from the Main PP window to gain access to the "Advanced" option when editing accounts.

Btw, I use Interlink as well (although, in the end, I actually use PP ~98+% of the time in my case). 8)
Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. - Will Rogers
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Jeff
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Re: *Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by Jeff »

mjs mentions what I would have mentioned, too, so be sure to check those.

You can enable logging in POP Peeper by pressing Ctrl+D on the main menu; be sure to enable:
- POP3/IMAP
- Log MultiLines


One other thing I came up with while re-reading your explanation (since it only seems to affect 1 account and not another) -- check to see if you're hiding read messages for that account:
1) Edit the account (ie. your main inbox)
2) Select the "Advanced" page
3) Check the current value for "hide messages from all accounts"

If that value is either "all" or "read" then you need to view that specific account to see all its messages (ie. select the account in the dropbox above the message list). Since you said you have a couple of old messages, I doubt that it would be "all", but "read" may be a possibility.
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Francis17
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Re: *Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by Francis17 »

Thanks guys, mostly good suggestions but...
Check "hide messages from all accounts"
Had already done this, above.
"Messages" > uncheck "Enable display filters"
Unchecking this Off made no difference.
[Look at] "Max number of messages to retrieve" for all-accounts and for this one account
These fields were blank, so I tested various numbers for this one account. Ya hafta set the number, save changes, then Check mail. Test values:
- 2 => two of the new/unread messages (not the new*est* messages), and zero of the previously-displayed messages.
- 8 => all of the new/unread messages, one yes-new message , and zero of the previously-displayed messages.
-10 => all of the messages I expected to see.
-11 => zero messages. Interlink shows 11 messages.
-99 => back to the previously-displayed two older messages.
- 0 => same two.
-[blank] => same two.

Whut. How does that make sense? Okay, I remember that IL and PP often present different views of a mailbox. To get identical views, I have to exit IL and wait for it to close all its IMAP connections, then Check mail in PP. Usually PP then shows the latest changes done in IL. But not with Zoho? Are they doing something with Labels, like gmail does, which appear to IMAP as folders? [don't go there]

Maybe there is something about some of the messages that is bothering the Zoho server or PP?
- Moved the two older messages to a different folder, and did the trick of "updating the server": all of the new messages appeared as expected, with the moved messages in the other folder, as expected. Okay, that might be a fix, if it is repeatable and consistent ... but Nope.

- Moved them back to Inbox, then to a different-other folder, but PP listed them in both PP-accounts pointing at those folders.
-Moved them to another email account entirely, but PP listed them in both PP-accounts pointing at those server-accounts.

Does PP need to retrieve exactly the number of messages in the folder, as reported by IL? Bc that worked above. Nope, PP now lists all new messages twice? And I can repeat the failure and make it show them three times? WTAF. I prefer to leave those fields blank, as I want all accounts to "retrieve all" messages.

If this were a normal mailbox on my domain host (domain control panel, website server, email server) then I would FTP in to the mailbox folder and delete all the Exim status files, in an attempt to zero out and re-start the server's idea of what messages are in the mailbox. I mean, the last-ditch idea would be to re-create that email account. Except this is a Zoho account, not Exim on a webserver where I have admin access to the domain and all its folders+files.

Idea. Instead of testing against IL, test against Zoho webmail instead, bc that gives the authoritative/definitive view. Or even better, test from upstream to downstream like: make changes in webmail, refresh IL's view to see what an IMAP client *should* show, then refresh PP's view to see what happens. Ugh. What happens if I view or delete PP's 'phantom' messages? They display and delete as expected, inside just PP. But how can that work if the other two IMAP clients think those messages don't exist anymore?

Clue: PP's accounts list has columns for Unread and New. These numbers match the 'wrong' count of messages displayed in the account window (View dropdown is set to this one account). But in the "Edit account" dialog, beside the [Delete] button, PP shows the actual number of messages in the folder on the server; this number matches the counts from Zoho webmail and IL. Guessing it comes from the IMAP status conversation with the server, but I didn't look at the logs to find it.

Is there a "Compact database" function? Should I try that using an SQLite tool? Nope, that didn't do anything.

Okay, moved all the messages out of the Inbox using Webmail, then deleted all (phantom) messages out of the Inbox using PP. Then moved known-good messages back to the Inbox, and PP displayed them correctly. I don't *even* want to futz with it anymore. Gonna leave the suspect message in a sub-folder, where PP won't see it. Properly close all server connections, post this, and remember to not get near this rabbit hole Haha If PP gets confused, showing messages that have already been moved or deleted in another client, just delete them again in PP, affecting only their ghosts, and move on.
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Jeff
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Re: *Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by Jeff »

Ok, well, glad to hear that things have sync'd again.

I'll mention a few insider details in case it happens again:

The total/unread/new message counts that PP displays are generally calculated/determined locally. ie. if the server reports that there are 100 messages, that doesn't necessarily mean PP will report that there are 100 messages. If PP only has 95 messages, then it will report 95 messages. This becomes a bit of a gray area if you do a check for "number of messages only", but assuming you don't do that...

"Ghost messages" -- in general, PP always syncs messages with what the server reports. There are a couple of exceptions to this:
1) If messages appear with a red-X in the status '!' column -- this means that the server has removed the message, but PP is keeping the message for one reason or another (the 2 main reasons being that (a) you've specified PP not remove these messages and (b) you have an open view-message window and PP will will clean those messages up once you close the view-message windows).

2) Another possibility is that your message database is corrupt. If that's the case, then this problem could recur. With all the moving around of messages and what-not, it may be a good idea just to delete the database and allow PP to re-sync the messages using a fresh DB. I'm going to assume you know what you're doing since you've already talked about compacting with a sqlite tool (btw, this can be done in PP, too, under Options / Tools / Storage). When you delete the data.db file, just make sure that PP isn't running at the time (and I generally recommend renaming the data.db file instead of deleting it, just in case you have a moment of regret, and then delete it sometime later).
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Godiva
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Re: *Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by Godiva »

Jeff wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 2:33 pm "Ghost messages" -- in general, PP always syncs messages with what the server reports. There are a couple of exceptions to this:
1) If messages appear with a red-X in the status '!' column -- this means that the server has removed the message, but PP is keeping the message for one reason or another (the 2 main reasons being that (a) you've specified PP not remove these messages and (b) you have an open view-message window and PP will will clean those messages up once you close the view-message windows).
Could another reason for the red-X be that I have set a message limit in PP for that account? I also have Zoho accounts, and on some accounts I have specified a message limit in the Advanced section in PP's Edit Account box. In some of those accounts, PP displays the summary line of a lot of older messages, but they have a red-X in the status column, and the content of those messages aren't retrievable using PP.

When I read your statement about server removal (which I highlighted in blue), it immediately scared me (because I don't remember deleting such a large number of messages within my Zoho account), so I checked my Zoho account directly (via the web and Zoho's own client), and the "X'd" messages are still there (normal status, not deleted or flagged in any way), so the server hasn't removed those messages. Whew! :mrgreen:
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Jeff
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Re: *Some* Zoho Inbox messages not displayed

Post by Jeff »

Could another reason for the red-X be that I have set a message limit in PP for that account?
Absolutely, yes.

If you set a message limit (of say, 100), then POP Peeper will ask the server for messages 1-100, so it won't even know about the other messages. If you actually have 5000 messages in your inbox, then as far as PP is concerned, they don't exist and that's why you get the red-X if you have the "remove messages not on server" option disabled.
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