Unread message count wrong - yet another

Mail
1

I am tempted to mark this as an FAQ, or more accurately a frequently reported bug, For the record, I am a VIP support customer, but I prefer to report issues to the public forum, so that others may comment. if there is no fix I might grudgingly copy this to the VIP support form.

right now I am looking at a folder that eMclient reports as having no unread messages.

in the eMclient message list, I count 23 Unread messages (bolded), and another 15 that are read.

Thunderbird reports the correct message count.

Yes, I very carefully did not visit the unread messages in such a way that their status would be changed to read. And for good measure I have just now marked them all as Unread… Although interestingly, EMclient updated the unread count to 17, even though as I mentioned above it is actually 38. i.e. toggling message read/unread sometimes seems to get eMclient to change its count. But not enough to make it accurate.

Yes, I hit “Refresh”, and Waited until the refresh arrows stopped chasing each other.

Yes, I have conversations disabled. Although for good measure I enabled conversations, actually iterating through all 3 values of conversations, and although the unread message count change, it was never accurate.

I am using EMclient version 9.1.2109 (9967b93). “check for update” says there is no update available.

although you can see that I have googled “eMclient unread message count wrong”, and have looked at your recommendations for several of these items, I have not looked at all of the form reports. Like I said, this appears to be a frequently reported bug.

the recommendations to try to solve these broken message counts that I have seen so far are:

  • REFRESH …
  • conversations on/off
  • toggle unread on/off
  • Reboot the PC

and ultimately

  • disconnect the account and then reconnect

I have not yet done the last.

I am a little bit reluctant to disconnect and then reconnect the account, because I spent quite a bit of time creating search folders. And I am unclear as to whether search folders survive the account being unconnected and reconnected, or if they do not survive, whether backing up the configuration and then restoring will restore the same old search folders as before. For that matter, even just the order of which folders are favorites is a pain to re-create.

I really want to ask if there’s a way of dumping configuration such as search folders or favorites to a text file. Which would also be useful for tracking changes.

but overall

Q: are there any other “magic tricks” that have a chance of re-synchronizing the unread message count for folders in eMclient? anything short of disconnecting/reconnect the account? Or if disconnecting/reconnecting is necessary, can you assure me that I can restore the same configuration of search folders and favorites as before the disconnection,

2

Have you tried repairing the folder (right-click, properties, repair)?
Wouldn’t hurt doing an eMC Backup beforehand?

3

Thanks for the suggestion Al. I’m a bit embarrassed that I didn’t think of it myself.

WIP: backed up, clicked repair…

Yep, that seemed to do the trick. Thank you very much.

I would suggest adding this to the eMclient FAQ.

BTW, The text on the DialogBox related to Prepare seem to suggest that it is flushing the cache for only a single message at a time if you click on a message, or a single folder at a time if you click on folder.

Q: is there a way to “repair” the entire eMclient database?

A: … Googling found Data base repair tool - #3 by Gary

reinstall same version, to repair the installation

If you really want to run it manually, with eM Client closed, use this command:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\eM Client\MailClient.exe" /dbrepair

4

Live and learn. No need to be embarrassed. We all learn something every day!

Above my pay grade as I am only a volunteer and not an employee. One of the employees that pop in here may read this and have it added.

I am sure @Gary will respond to this question during his work day later.

5

We already have a FAQ for this, or rather for the reverse, where the folder is showing unread messages when there aren’t any. It is the same principle though.

Please be aware that repairing the database is not the same as repairing a folder.

  1. Repairing a folder by right-click and choosing Properties > Repair > Repair, will delete the cached data, and resync it again from the server. For Gmail or Google Workspace accounts, you repair the All Mail folder instead, and that will repair the whole account.
  2. Using the command prompt to repair the database looks for any errors in the data stored in the database and attempts to repair it. It does not resync the messages from the server.
1 Like
6

Thanks Gary. That bit about “repairing” Gmail found especially useful All Mail

BTW, terminology “repair” sound scary, whereas invalidating the cached data and/or re-synchronizing is something that many of us are much more familiar with.

BTW ^ 2: in my day job we distinguish cache management operations invalidation, flushing, and discarding. in a writeback cache flushing forces dirty data to be written back. discarding throws away dirty data, and may therefore result in loss of changes. Invalidating typically means that clean data is discarded, so it has to be re-fetched.

Q: Which of these does “repairing a folder” correspond to?

Will you or can you tell the user (1) if there is any dirty data that cannot be synchronized, that for some reason is blocking synchronization? and/or (2) if any dirty data has been discarded without being synchronized?

there’s a big difference between “might result in loss of data” and “has resulted in loss of data”

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BTW ^ 3: you should update the FAQ so that searching for any case of incorrect message counts will find it.