Email Clients

You may have read earlier that I had written a funky script to remove email that I’d never ever read from my inbox, and it had all gone horribly wrong when I passed a null string into the function and it deleted the whole inbox along with 700+ messages in it. Disaster to some extent!

Then I sat and had a think about how long it would take to import all 700+ headers every time Thunderbird wanted to read my inbox. That wouldn’t be efficient – surely Thunderbird does some caching?

Lo and behold it does, and I’ve recovered everything (and a little bit more besides!) – let me explain.

Bratz movie Recovering Deleted Mail – Thunderbird!

• As soon as I got back to my machine with Thunderbird on, I turned off the Internet, unplugged cables and routers. The machine was no completely independent (it hasn’t been this way in a long time!).
• I located the Thunderbird data files.
  (in my case: c:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile name>)
• Under this directory I located where IMAP does it’s caching (ImapMail\<imap servername>).
• I copied the INBOX and the INBOX.msf to a directory under Mail\Local Folders (in the Profile directory).
• I loaded Thunderbird, and there in my local folders was all my old mail (minus attachments I suspect!)
• I plugged in the Internet again and let the IMAP account download any new mail since I’d made my screw up.
• Then dragged and dropped all the messages to the IMAP folder!

Only one slight concern is it’s still going and says there’s 16,000 emails in there. Looking at what’s being uploaded there are a fair amount of duplicates and also the deleted mail is still in there (so it’s probably because I haven’t compacted that folder in some time!

R’coon Dawg release

The duplicates are easy to dispose of via the Remove Duplicates Add-on for Thunderbird. Deletions I’ll just have to delete again Maybe that script can help!

The Prisoner video I hope this helps somebody in a blind panic one day!

A word to the wise, always make backups….. Particularly when you are testing a script that has the ability to delete emails!!!!!!!

I was writing a script to delete some of my emails whilst I’m away, regular newsletters, advertising from holiday companies, you know the sort of stuff I’m talking about? Not spam, and not stuff I want to unsubscribe from – just stuff – stuff that I’ll only delete when I get home anyway.

Anyway, I screwed it up and an empty variable got passed into the cleanup script and has blown away my entire inbox. Luckily it’s my more spammy account that I signup to most things with, however I’m quite good at pruning it normally and it had over 700 posts in! GRR!

So a lesson, backup files and mailboxes before you run ANY automated scripts against them!
photo credit: alvy

Let me set the record straight for all those that have been querying me on the subject. I love Mozilla Firefox! I binned IE long ago and won’t even install IE7 currently! But I’m having some problems with the Mozilla alternative to Outlook, Thunderbird.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m using Thunderbird daily, in all fairness I’m using it in IMAP mode only and still downloading everything to my damned huge PST file in Outlook on another machine for archive purposes. But what are the alternatives?

I could go the whole hog and use Thunderbird for everything, and I do love some of it’s features – but detest others!! Maybe it’s the fact I’m running it in IMAP mode and haven’t gone the whole hog and used it?

I’ve spent many weeks looking at different clients and the options ahead of me, and still have yet to firm up my mind completely! The two biggest problems being that I
a) Access my mail from multiple machines
b) Would ideally like it to sync with my PDA (that all but ties me to a MS solution so I might have to give up on that one!).

ZDNet provides a decent review of some 9 email clients, but this ultimately boils down to two options in my opinon – Outlook or Thunderbird and I was well aware of that!

If you’re just on anti MS bashing session the KMFMS website goes into the realms of describing an anti-Microsoft product for almost every Microsoft product on the market!

Evolution for Windows, seems to have sadly fallen to the wayside on the sourceforge. – more’s the pity!

There’s quite a good quick start guide for Firefox and Thunderbird on the Open for Business site, mostly what I already knew, but will come in handy for those considering the move!

The Lightning Extension for Thunderbird appears to drag it up closer to Outlook functionality. But probably not all the way I suspect.

The Slush God seems to see it exactly my way… If I could find a good scheduling client that I could use alongside Thunderbird that would sync I might just have cracked it!! Slush God if you find anything let me know!

And finally, someone seems to have cracked this requirement designing FinchSync which I obviously need to look at further!!! It seems to have mixed reviews with Lifehacker & Marcus P. Zillman picking up on it.

I’m sick of frantically typing Outlook error codes into google when customers give them to me….

0×800CCCC2 RAS_NOT_INSTALLED RAS/DUN not installed.
0×800CCCC3 RAS_PROCS_NOT_FOUND RAS/DUN process not found.
0×800CCCC4 RAS_ERROR RAS/DUN error returned.
0×800CCCC5 RAS_INVALID_CONNECTOID Connectoid damaged or missing.
0×800CCCC6 RAS_GET_DIAL_PARAMS Error getting dial settings.

0×800CCCA0 NNTP_RESPONSE_ERROR News server response error.
0×800CCCA1 NNTP_NEWGROUPS_FAILED Newsgroup access failed.
0×800CCCA2 NNTP_LIST_FAILED LIST command to server failed.
0×800CCCA3 NNTP_LISTGROUP_FAILED Unable to display list.
0×800CCCA4 NNTP_GROUP_FAILED Unable to open group.
0×800CCCA5 NNTP_GROUP_NOTFOUND Group not on server.
0×800CCCA6 NNTP_ARTICLE_FAILED Message not on server.
0×800CCCA7 NNTP_HEAD_FAILED Message header not found.
0×800CCCA8 NNTP_BODY_FAILED Message body not found.
0×800CCCA9 NNTP_POST_FAILED Unable to post to server.
0×800CCCAA NNTP_NEXT_FAILED Unable to open next message.
0×800CCCAB NNTP_DATE_FAILED Unable to display date.
0×800CCCAC NNTP_HEADERS_FAILED Unable to display headers.
0×800CCCAD NNTP_XHDR_FAILED Unable to display MIME headers.
0×800CCCAE NNTP_INVALID_USERPASS Invalid user or password.

0×800CCC60 SMTP_RESPONSE_ERROR Invalid response.
0×800CCC61 SMTP_UNKNOWN_RESPONSE_CODE Unknown error code.
0×800CCC62 SMTP_500_SYNTAX_ERROR Syntax error returned.
0×800CCC63 SMTP_501_PARAM_SYNTAX Parameter syntax incorrect.
0×800CCC64 SMTP_502_COMMAND_NOTIMPL Command not implemented.
0×800CCC65 SMTP_503_COMMAND_SEQ Improper command sequence.
0×800CCC66 SMTP_504_COMMAND_PARAM_NOTIMPL Command not implemented.
0×800CCC67 SMTP_421_NOT_AVAILABLE Command not available.
0×800CCC68 SMTP_450_MAILBOX_BUSY Mailbox is locked and busy.
0×800CCC69 SMTP_550_MAILBOX_NOT_FOUND Mailbox not found.
0×800CCC6A SMTP_451_ERROR_PROCESSING Error processing request.
0×800CCC6B SMTP_551_USER_NOT_LOCAL User mailbox is known, but mailbox not on this server.
0×800CCC6C SMTP_452_NO_SYS

0×800CCC40 WINSOCK_WSASYSNOTREADY Network subsystem is unusable.
0×800CCC41 WINSOCK_WSAVERNOTSUPPORTED Windows Sockets cannot support this application.
0×800CCC42 WINSOCK_WSAEPROCLIM
0×800CCC43 WINSOCK_WSAEFAULT Bad address.
0×800CCC44 WINSOCK_FAILED_WSASTARTUP Unable to load Windows Sockets.
0×800CCC45 WINSOCK_WSAEINPROGRESS Operation now in progress. This error appears if a Windows Sockets API is called while a blocking function is in progress.

0×800CCCD1 IMAP_LOGINFAILURE Login failed.
0×800CCCD2 IMAP_TAGGED_NO_RESPONSE Message tagged.
0×800CCCD3 IMAP_BAD_RESPONSE Invalid response to request.
0×800CCCD4 IMAP_SVR_SYNTAXERR Syntax error.
0×800CCCD5 IMAP_NOTIMAPSERVER Not an IMAP server.
0×800CCCD6 IMAP_BUFFER_OVERFLOW Buffer limit exceeded.
0×800CCCD7 IMAP_RECVR_ERROR Recovery error.
0×800CCCD8 IMAP_INCOMPLETE_LINE Incomplete data.
0×800CCCD9 IMAP_CONNECTION_REFUSED Connection not allowed.
0×800CCCDA IMAP_UNRECOGNIZED_RESP Unknown response.
0×800CCCDB IMAP_CHANGEDUID User ID has changed.
0×800CCCDC IMAP_UIDORDER User ID command failed.
0×800CCCDD IMAP_UNSOLICITED_BYE Unexpected disconnect.
0×800CCCDE IMAP_IMPROPER_SVRSTATE Invalid server state.
0×800CCCDF IMAP_AUTH_NOT_POSSIBLE Unable to authorize client.
0×800CCCE0 IMAP_OUT_OF_AUTH_METHODS No more authorization types.

Thanks to Girl Geekette for this – I really must get round to browsing her blog as it looks like some really useful stuff on there.