OT: Thunderbird spontaneously unsubscribing folders.

[Rolf Turner]

On 12/07/14 12:14, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 07/12/14 07:54, Rolf Turner wrote:
>>
>> This is of course not a Fedora issue as such, but I have tried hard and without success to find answers elsewhere.  And since this list has so many contributors who are *so* knowledgeable (abrasive, cranky, cryptic, but above all *knowledgeable*) I thought I would ask here.
>>
>> The question is actually two-fold:
>>
>> (1) From time to time, for no reason that I can discern, Thunderbird spontaneously unsubscribes all (or perhaps most of) my email folders and subfolders.
>>
>> I can of course re-subscribe to them, but since I have a rather large number of folders and subfolders (and subsubfolders ...) this is a lengthy and tedious task.
>>
>> Has anyone any insight into why this unsubscription phenomenon should occur and how one might prevent it from occurring?
>>
>> (2) Failing the last, is there any way to *speed up* the process of re-subscribing?  I would like a way of essentially subscribing to *everything*, with a single click (or something like that) and then be able to go through and unsubscribe to those relatively few folders to which I do not wish to subscribe.
>>
>> Groping around on the web I found a way to bypass the "subscribe" system.  One goes to Edit -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Advanced, and then unchecks "Show only subscribed folders".
>>
>> This is not too bad, but it leaves me with a number of bits of crap in my folder list that I *do not* wish to see.  Things that Thunderbird imposes on the user, like "Journal", "Junk E-Mail", "Notes", "Sent Items", "Sent Messages", etc.  (The last two really puzzle me; what function might they serve that is different from the function of the "Sent" folder?)  It seems to be impossible to get rid of these, and the only way to mask them is to unsubscribe.  But then I need to *subscribe* to all of the stuff that I *do* want to see.
>>
>> Grateful for any insight or advice.
>
> Are you talking about imap folders?  If so, the subscription information is kept on the server side.  So, for example, when I use T-Bird on a Virtual Machine and define my existing email account all my subscribed folders are displayed.  That is the way IMAP works.  This way any IMAP client show show the same information making it easy to move from system to system and have access to the same information.
>
> Is your IMAP server under your control?

I don't *think* it is under my control.  The server is run by the 
University of Auckland and is presumably under the control of the U. of 
A. IT department.  Who are, of course, a law unto themselves. :-)

>
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> Rolf Turner
>>
>> P. S. I am running Thunderbird 17.0.7, if that is of any relevance.
>>
>
> It should not matter....but that is a very old version.

So how might I upgrade to the latest version?  I must confess that I am 
running a very elderly version of Fedora (17, to be explicit).  I don't 
dare try to upgrade my Fedora version, given what I have read on this 
list about the problems that are involved with such upgrades.  I cannot 
afford to be stuck with a broken system.  I am not sufficiently 
knowledgeable to be able to fix a broken system and I have no local 
resources to give me assistance.

Would I need a more recent version of Fedora in order to get a more 
recent version of Thunderbird to run?

> No matter what version I've used, I've not had any problems in that area.

Hmm.  As usual, the universe seems to be picking on *me*! :-)

cheers,

Rolf