I have just started exploring Balsa, and many things about it could make it one of my favorite email clients. Except that sometimes it almost doesn’t work at all, in that the message list does not load or display any messages.
For example, oftentimes if I select a mailbox like Inbox, Sentbox, or Trash, there is just an empty display where the messages should be listed. The status bar might say something like “Shown mailbox: Sentbox with 2 messages”, but there are no messages displayed in the message list.
Also, in Mailbox → Hide Messages, everything is deselected. So, nothing should be hidden due to this setting.
I am on Balsa 2.6.1 in Xfce 4.16 on Devuan Linux. Is this a known problem? Or perhaps something that has been fixed in later releases?
I don’t know if anything has changed since then (I’m on 2.6.4) but I
vaguely recall that happening to me in the past. What I did was to
type a few characters into the search box at the top, hit Enter to
apply the filter, then immediately erase what I entered and hit Enter
again. That usually restored the display to what I expected. It
doesn’t explain the problem, but at least it was an easy workaround.
Thanks for the suggestion. Although, in my case it is not working. Currently, for example, the Inbox and Sentbox are displaying correctly, but the Trash says it has 1 message, but it is not displaying it even using the search box (index filter) method you describe.
Edit: It is very erratic. After closing and opening the program a few times and experimenting with the index filter, the Trash is now displaying. Sometimes the mailboxes seem to display properly for some time and then the problem occurs again.
Is there actually a message in the trash? Having the count wrong would
be different from not displaying a message that is really there. Right
click on “Trash” in the mailbox list, select “Properties” and you
should see the file it is using.
Thanks for the help. Yes, there are messages in there. I have been sending, receiving, and deleting to see if I can figure this out, but there seems to be no sense to it. Sometimes it works and then it will quit working.
Just now, the Trash is not displaying again. Status bar says “Shown mailbox: Trash with 2 messages”. If I use the index filter to enter some text that doesn’t match the messages, it says “Shown mailbox: Trash with 2 messages, 2 hidden”. If I delete the index filter text and hit the enter key again (as you suggested), it goes back to the original status bar display, but still does not show the messages.
Right click Trash → Properties shows 1.2 kB file size on the mailbox, so there are messages in there.
Strange, indeed. Next step for me would be to look in that file (using
emacs or another text editor, for example, but just to loo, don’t
change) so see if you can see anything strange in the message(s). I
doubt you’ll find anything, but it’s worth looking. However, do note
the subject and sender of any message there, and try typing that into
the filter.
Thanks again. Yes, the mailbox file looks normal looking at it as plain text. The mailboxes are displaying correctly again in the most recent attempt. As I mentioned, it seems to make no sense when it works and when it doesn’t. I guess, with no specific fix, I will just have to see how often it will work on my current system and hope that it works better on a later release than I have.