My wife has been using Pegasus for going on 30 years, and has created a unique message filing system.. nested folders within nested folders.. like hundreds of filing trays with filing trays below them, and many thousands (10's of thousands?) of emails in them.

Example:
Topic 1, with sub topics, May 2020, June 2020, July 2020, etc.
She may well have subfolders under each; Subject 1,Subject 2, etc. under May 2020, and again same or similar named subfolders under June 2020 folder, and July, etc. (The subfolder names make sense only to her.. ). The messages are located under those subfolders (filing trays).

Well, it appears she did something in the course of "organizing emails" (not sure what. Moved, maybe?) and the folder/filing tray "Topic 1" can no longer be found.

I've expanded all the folders, but can not find the "Topic 1" folder anywhere..

But I can text search (headers) for emails sent from a particular sender that would have been filed somewhere under "Topic 1", and have found about 4800+ messages that appear to be emails that would be under that topic 1, so they still exist somewhere. However, the displayed location folder/filing tray in the search results doesn't include the full path, so I can not locate the parent folder those messages are (now) nested in or under.

So the question is, can I/how can I locate precisely where the actual email message(s) that were found and listed in the search results folder, are now actually residing in the Pegasus folder list?

The Tray structure is stored the HIERARCH.PM file. The structure is virtual, not physical. This is relevant, and quite important, when there is an extensive Trays structure because corruption of HIERARCH.PM is not uncommon. When it happens, a new one is created by polling every folder file for its information. The result is the loss of the entire Tray structure. Precautions include backing up often so that you can restore a recent version of the file, and a naming convention in which each child folder name contains a references to it parent Tray so that, in a worst case scenario, manually rebuilding the Tray structure will be easier.

As for where "Topic1" is. You referenced "folder/filing tray "Topic 1". It can not be both a Folder and Tray. A Tray can only hold Folders. Folders hold messages. The search results show the Folder containing the message of each hit. It will not show a parent Tray. To find if that Folder is in a Tray, make note of the Folder name.

1. Close Pegasus Mail
2. Make a copy of the HIERARCH.PM to a temporary location.
3. Rename the copy to HIERARCH_PM.TXT.
4. Double click on it to open it in your default text editor.
5. Do a search for the folder name.

Entries in HIERARCH.PM are in the form:

0,0,"U12CGKH7:6C1E:FOL03D5F","0851582:TrayName","FolderName"

Entries for Folders that are in the root of the mailbox will have a TrayName of "My mailbox". This tells you whether the folder is in the root of the Folder list or what Tray it is in.

You can do similar to find a nested tray. You would search for the Tray name you are looking for. If it is nested, the entry will be in the form of:

1,2,"26E96249:TrayName","37237349: ParentTray","TrayName"

Note: the numeric and alphanumeric parts will vary.

Hope this helps.

Hi Brian, thanks for the reply... I'll take a shot at it shortly..

however, ..

Yes, I know.. but filing tray and sub-filing-tray is a bit clumsy.. most folks are familiar with the standard computing folder/subfolder concept.. (would my reverting to the older directory/subdirectory nesting terminology be even more cringing? ).

Anyway, once the wife is up and ready to allow me to use "her" computer, I'll see what I can figure out, and provide feedback.. thanks again.

Oh my gosh no. I hate that Microsoft adopted "folder" in place of "directory". I use the term "directory" in my Pegasus Mail support correspondence to differentiate between a system "folder" and a Pegasus Mail folder. I'm sure that makes many people cringe. The terms "tray" and "sub-tray" would be perfectly clear in the Pegasus Mail context.

BTW, I apologize for my response being less detailed than what I normally do. I was trying to sneak it in before heading out the door to run an errand. Post back with any questions before you start.

Sorry, Brian, I spent the better part of last night dealing with my younger (age 60 next month) sister who only knows apple iPhone trying to work with my mother's (age 90) windows laptop, over the phone (she and my mother are down in AZ, I'm in the Pacific Northwet) so I'm not sure what language I'm using any more..

Anyway, I found it.. (I think)

1,2,"358E3928:Topic 1","358E3928:Topic 1","Topic 1"

(Yes the name Topic 1 is repeated..)

When I search on "358E3928" I get a bunch of results such as...

0,0,"77FAEF68:4E85:FOL02E2B","358E3928:Topic 1","Subject 1"

I'm not sure what it's telling me, starting with the significance of the two leading columns.. "0,0,xxx", "1,2,xxx" especially when I see,

2,1,"70CF1261:My mailbox","","My mailbox" , for the root..

That sounds painful. Better you than me.

Normally this would indicate that there is a subtray named "Topic 1" inside of a tray named "Topic 1" but in that case, the internal designator (the alphanumeric value "358E3928" ) would be different, not duplicated like in your entry. The fact that it is the same makes it appear that the tray is inside of itself which isn't possible. I don't have any idea what would have caused this. I am not fan of manually editing HIERARCH.PM but I'm thinking that may be necessary. Before pursuing that, please confirm that you can not see a tray named "Topic 1" in the folder list.

These entries identify the folders that are in the tray named "Topic 1". Can you find the folder named "Subject 1" anywhere in the folder list?

That's what I thought too... and that's the rub..

no, if I open all the trays, there is no "Topic 1" anywhere.

But, since "Topic 1" is also the name of the sender, and I search for Email messages containing "Topic 1" in the header, I get over 4K emails listed in the recent search results, shown in numerous different folders.. so they are all there somewhere..

I'll have to look again to see if any of the folders show up in the tree, but I if she used the same name for folders in different trays, ("Bob" under Topic 1 and "Bob" under Topic 2, for example) that's an "Iron Pyrite" mine.

I'll ask again, can you enlighten me as to the meaning of each of the different columns? For example in the following three listings:

2,1,"70CF1261:My mailbox","","My mailbox"

1,0,"66831132:EDUCATION","70CF1261:My mailbox","EDUCATION"

0,0,"0F2EE6BA:1168:FOL00D0D","66831132:EDUCATION","Education"

[ It appears there's a filing tray under Mailbox called 'EDUCATION" (66831132:EDUCATION), with a folder named "Education" under it, And that Education folder is associated with "0F2EE6BA:1168:FOL00D0D". Do I presume that Filename FOL00D0D (human readable in the mail folder) is at 'address' 0F2EE6BA:1168 (machine location) ? Or am I actually as out in the weeds as I feel right now.]

And no, I have NO Idea how she moved the filing tray into itself (if that's what she did) .. but she says she was moving things using the menus, not drag and drop at that time. Maybe she found a bug, I don't know, but if anyone can find a way to break something, she's pretty good at it .

This is the entry that identifies the root of the folder list. The default name is "My mailbox" which is what you see here.

This is the entry for a Tray named "EDUCATION" located in the root (the parent named "My mailbox" ). Notice that the entry starts with the number "1". This indicates that the entry is for a tray.

This is the entry for the folder named "EDUCATION", in a tray named "Education". Notice that this entry starts with the number "0". This indicates that the entry is for a folder. This type of entry identifies the name of the file pair that makes up the folder. In this case, the "Education" folder is made up of the file pair FOL00D0D.PMM and FOL00D0D.PMI.

If I sound pretty smart right now, well I'm just fooling you because the meaning and purpose of many of alphanumeric sequences is a mystery to me. I think I have a document somewhere that explains them but my take-away from it was that they are not for us to mess with.

Yes, they are there somewhere. My conjecture is that HIEARCH.PM is confused by that entry showing the "Topic 1" tray inside of itself. This is causing it to not display the "Topic 1" tray in the folder list at all.

To attempt to make the "Topic 1" tray visible I would edit that line so that it puts the "Topic 1" tray at the root (My mailbox) level.

With Pegasus Mail closed:

1. Make sure you have a solid backup of the entire mailbox as well as a separate copy of current HIERARCH.PM that you can readily restore if this process fails.

2. In current HIERARCH.PM file, find this entry:

   1,2,"358E3928:Topic 1","358E3928:Topic 1","Topic 1"

   Edit it to be:

   1,2,"358E3928:Topic 1","70CF1261:My mailbox","Topic 1"

   Notice that your are changing the reference to the parent from "358E3928:Topic 1" to "70CF1261:My mailbox" which HIERARCH.PM should respond to by listing the "Topic 1" tray at the root level. You might want to copy/paste the "70CF1261:My mailbox" portion from one of the other entries.

Before starting Pegasus Mail I suggest temporarily adding the -o commandline option to the shortcut. This will start it in offline mode which will allow for an immediate restore without concern for newly received mail that is not in the backup. Once started, check the folder list. If it's munged, shut her down and restore HIERARCH.PM. Start up again in offline mode and make sure the folder list is back to where it was before starting this process.

Don't forget to remove the -o option once ready for normal operation.

Good luck.

I created a tray last night, called 1-Topic1, with the intention of "moving the emails listed in the search results folder into it (in case that actually would work), so I got the notion of doing exactly what you suggested, but using that new folder. However, putting it back under the My Mailbox folder makes more sense (occasionally the obvious escapes me..).

I told her to leave Pegasus open last night, and this morning I copied it all over to my own computer over my lan (all 24GB of it), so I have it "preserved" in its current state of confusion. I'll have her close it, back up my local copy of the heirarch.pm file and drop a "corrected" version in her Pegasus folder and see if it magically restores what passes for sanity in her world..

Stand by, I'll let you know what happens..

Keep in my that a search results folder is a 'link' folder. This means that it just contains links to the original messages. An attempt to move messages from a search results folder will result in copies being made in the destination folder. Deletes performed in a search results folder will not delete the original unless the option for doing so is enabled in Tools > Options > Incoming mail > Folder behaviours.

Yep, at the time, I was hoping that at least I'd have copies of the original messages, in case the originals went away if she closed the program or something else went awry. Now that I know a little better what the situation is (I think), that "desperate" approach is likely not necessary.

Success!

Yes, Virginia, apparently it IS possible to move a filing tray into itself using the menus (not drag and drop). However, if you do that, when Pegasus tries to reload the hierarchy, Pegasus says "that makes no sense", can't figure it out either, and decides to just ignore that tray from then on until maybe someday when Pegasus opens and reads the HIERARCH.PM file and the location for it actually makes sense.

Confirmed! Thanks for this discovery, and for your efforts identifying it. I will pass on as a potential bug.

Otay - I just created a "suggestion" (to fix) with instructions on how to reproduce and how to recover..

It's titled:
"BAD MOVE" - (a BUG REPORT., or, "How to make a filing tray disappear.." )

Thanks for your help. I don't get under the hood with pegasus often enough to just jump on these things with abandon - I'd have probably figured it out sooner or later but you saved me a lot of time and tip-toeing trepidation getting to recovery.

My wife thinks I'm a hero..

A fix is on David Harris' radar for the next release.

@Steeley, I hope that it will be rewarding the learn that the bug that allowed a tray to be coped to itself resulting in its disappearance will be fixed in the next release. This is per David Harris. Thanks again for efforts in identifying it.

Thanks Brian, I'll notify my wife she gets another Gold Star