Hi Brian,

Well, #2 seems to have done the trick! I've actually lost very little mail in the interim since I checked mail using my ipod set to leave it on the server. After closing and opening Pegasus 6-7 times, I downloaded all my new mail and all is still well. Thank you for your help. Now the question is: Will it happen again? Stay tuned, I hope not. Thanks again.

David

Hello all,

I am a VERY long time user of Pegasus (since about 1986 or so) and this is the first time that I have had a serious problem. I am running the latest version of Pegasus on Win7. I put saved mail into message folders within trays. Today I find that one on my trays is missing along with the contained folders. Unfortunately it is the "People" tray with folders for all of my correspondents' emails filed under their names in it. It was very large; does anyone know (1) if there is a limit on size? (2)Is there any way to get the tray and contents back?

Thanks in advance

David

There is a 2GB limit on folder size.  Hitting this limit doesn't

cause folders to disappear but will cause them to misbehave.  What you

are describing sounds like a folder that was inadvertently moved

(dragged and dropped?) into another folder or it was deleted. 

Another

cause could be a corrupted HEIRARCH.PM file which maintains the

tray/folder structure.  It it gets corrupted it can make it appear that

folders are missing.  It can be rebuilt but any nested

folder structure will be lost in the process.  This means that all

folders will be at the same level 

To rebuild a HEIRARCH.PM file

shut down Pegasus Mail.  Make a complete backup of your mailbox folder. 

Rename the HEIRARCH.PM file located in your mailbox folder to something

like HEIRARCH_PM.BAD.  During the next startup of  Pegasus Mail all

folder files (.PMM/.PMI pairs) will be identified and a new HEIRARCH.PM

file will be created.

 If you don't know the location of your

mailbox folder use the "Info" tab located in Help | About Pegasus Mail. 

The path to the home mailbox folder is what you are looking for.

Hi there,

            I am in a similar situation. I have upgraded from XP to Win 7 64 bit, One of my mail folder shows the heading for the mail, but, when I open the mail with the upgraded Pmail I see no message. If I reinstall the older version I get an error message:-

           "  This message contains binary or non-textual data that cannot be previewed within Pegasus Mail."
File name unknown.

Presumably the message is still there. Other mail folders seem OK!

I have tried your option above and it made no difference. Perhaps I should look for something else?

Thanks

Rob

Hi Brian, Thanks for the reply. I don't think that I (or the cat) could have deleted the folder because of the two stage sanity check. Additionally, I doubt an unintended drag and drop since there are no large enough PMM files. Let me explain what I have been able to do since my original msg. I was able to recover my entire MAIL directory from my backup server. The last backup was Fri @ 11:00pm. The problem showed itself on Monday morning, so very little activity was not backed up.I recovered just the subdirectory referring to the mail account in question (after saving the present one) and when I restarted Pegasus the missing folder reappeared along with lots of deleted mail in folders. This is good so far! Then I got rid of the deleted mail (deleted again) and downloaded new mail. As soon as I added a msg to one of the message folders, that folder disappeared! Having looked at that folder before doing anything else, I know that it was huge. Cont next

Cont. That's why I doubt the drag and drop explanation. I think that I will re-recover the backup and "prune" the huge folder. That should do it. I'll try to get to it tomorrow.

Thanks again,

David 

ps. the huge folder contained msgs from our daughter with attached pix of our new granddaughter. I did save the pix, but I should have deleted the msgs.

I am curious whether that mail folder file size ( the .pmm) has hit the 2GB ceiling.  If so then pruning the folder or moving messages to a different folder is the route to go.

To identify the .pmm file associated with that mail folder right click on the folder name then select folder information.  It could be that the size of the backed up file size is just below problem level but adding another message hits the limit.

Hi again,

Well I have some interesting info. 1. The size of the .PMM file containing the mail from my daughter is nowhere near the 2 Gig limit (577,559 KB). 2. That file IS present in all versions of the MAIL folder where the entire "People"subdirectory disappeared. 3. It is NOT present in the version of MAIL where just my daughter's subdirectory disappeared. This is beginning to look like a hierarchy problem. I'm going to open the hierarchy files with notepad and compare them. I don't think that another restore will "hold" at this point.

David

The .pmm files don't get deleted as a result of corruption of the HIERARCH.PM file.  All that happens is the display in the Pegasus Mail folder window is wrong.  If .pmm files are getting deleted then something other than a corrupted HIERARCH file is the problem.  Here's what I would try.  Note:  The term "folder" indicates a Pegasus Mail folder and the terms "directory" or "subdirectory" indicate a Windows directory (folder).

1.  Rebuild the HIERARCH.PM file.  To do this, close Pegasus Mail then rename the existing HIERARCH.PM file to something like HIERARCH_PM.RENAMED.  Start Pegasus Mail and a new HIERARCH.PM file will be created.  Note, any nested folder structure will be flattened.

2.  If the folder containing your daughters messages does not appear in the Pegasus folder list shut down Pegasus then restore the associated .pmm/.pmi file pair from a backup to the mailbox subdirectory.  Once the file has been restored start Pegasus Mail.  The HIERARCH file should be updated and the folder should appear in the Pegasus folder list.  If so, right click on the folder name and perform each of the following:   Check consistency, Recover deleted space, Reindex.   So far so good I hope.  Do several shut down and start ups of Pegasus to see if the folder remains in the folder list (there is no reason why it shouldn't unless some 3rd party app like an AV/anti-malware app is interfering).

If the restored folder did not show up in the Pegasus Mail folder list then there could be an issue with identical internal folder ID's.  I don't know of any way to verify this but there is a utility called PMRestArch that is designed to duplicate .pmm files but with new internal folder IDs.  It is  located at http://www.lexacorp.com.pg/lexacorp_utilities.html#EMail.

If you've made it this far then the next thing will be to pay special attention to each action performed in Pegasus Mail in the hopes that if the folder disappears again you can identify exactly the action performed, what folders were involved, and what happened to the message being acted on.  If you work in List mode it would be helpful to keep the Folder window open and stretched large enough so you can see as much of the folder structure as possible.