Thunderbird won't recognize newly created folders

December 28, 2006 2:13 PM

After an automatic update, Thunderbird won't recognize newly created folders. Why, oh, why?

After a recent automatic update of Thunderbird, I can no longer move messages to newly created folders. I can still move messages to existing folders as before but now, when I try to move to new ones, I get a message "The message cannot be moved or copied to because writing to folder failed. To gain disk space, from the File menu, first choose "Empty Trash" then chose "Compact Folders" then try again." (I'm also unable to delete the newly created folders either.)

I tried their empty trash/compact folders suggestion and also reinstalled Thunderbird but neither seems to have solved the problem. Any other suggestions?

posted by Jaybo to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: You want to search/ask here. That's where the experts hang out.
posted by damn dirty ape at 2:19 PM on December 28, 2006

Response by poster: Just as a follow-up, this is the response I got - basically "delete all .msf" files in your profile and try again. That didn't work for me unfortunately as everytime I try to delete them, my computer crashes. So something else, hopefully not too scary, is happening.

It didn't solve my problem but I'll still mark you as "Best Answer" Damn Dirty Ape since the board was very responsive - I got an answer within a few hours of posting my query.
posted by Jaybo at 3:36 AM on January 12, 2007

Did you ever get a solution to that problem? I've just started to have what sounds like the same problem.
First, creatiing a new subfolder "appears" not to work, except that if I quit Thunderbird and then restart it, the new subfolder is there. But it doesn't let me move any messages to it. That part of the behavior is just as you reported, and compacting doesn't help.
posted by parteema at 10:34 AM on July 19, 2007