[quote user="James Kosalos"]

Tom,

Definately a step forward.  Thanks.  The Hierarch.pm file was 14kb and now is 5 kb when all of the "name Unavailable" lines are deleted.  When pegasus was restarted with the edited hierarch.pm file in place, the majority (but not all) of the "invisible" files/messages reappeared, but they have appeared in "My Mailbox" and not in the reattached mailbox, "2007_Mail_NG," the one with 352M of messages; that mailbox still appears to be empty. 

This still might be a hierarch.pm problem but it also may be caused by two identical folders (folders with the same internal ID in the PMM file)  Is it possible that some of these might have an identical name?  You might want to use this utility on the files in the directory being added to ensure that they all are unique.

PMRestArch - Pegasus Mail Restore Mail Folder Archives:
http://www.lexacorp.com.pg

Usage:
PMRestArch SourceDir DestinationDir

Description:
Pegasus Mail cannot display two mail folders with the same internal ID even if they are in separate mailboxes. Mail folders also have to be Read-Write.
      
This causes problems when trying to view mail folders which have been archived by copying them to backup media.

This utility:

1.  Copies all .PMM and .PMI files in the source directory to
    the destination directory and renames them as BAKxxxxx.PMM
    and BAKxxxx.PMI.

2.  Ensures that the resulting file is Read/Write.

3.  Creates a different internal unique ID for each file.

Once you have run this program to restore archived folders to a directory you can attach that directory using the Pegasus Mail 'Add mailbox to list' option and access the archived folders in this new mailbox.

When I search in C:\pmail\mail for *.PMM and *.PMI files I find that the great majority of them are in the C:\pmail\mail\2007_Mail_NG directory that was reattached and not in C:\PMAIL\Mail\ADMIN where I presume they would be located if indeed they were supposed to appear in "My Mailbox".

 
Not sure what you mean here.  Attached mailboxes do not move.

I think that something is still cross threaded as Pegasus is incorrectly identifying the location of the messages.  I'm waiting for your observations before I again try detaching and reattaching the 2007_Mail_NG mailbox because this operation appears to be instrumental in the "leakage" of files and directories that Pegasus is able to "see".

You must always use the same string for re-attaching a previously attached mailbox so that the hierarch.pm and folstate.pm do not get corrupted.
 

I'd like to try to get at the root of the problem before I go through the work of reindexing all my messages.  It's best to avoid the problem in the future.

I suspect that you did some moving of folders outside of WinPMail, including copying of folders.  Whenever you work outside of the program copying, moving and deleting folders,  this sort of thing can happen.

Jim 

I have for some time been using the "attach-detach mailbox" feature to archive old messages and also transfer mailboxes between machines to support my travels.  This is a terrific feature that has been working well until recently when I opened a detached/zipped/transfered/unzipped/reattached mailbox on another machine to find that some of the folders in the reattached mailbox now appeared to be empty.  Oops! 

I've been trying various experiments to find the root cause of the problm, but it only seems to get worse...the end result being a reattached mailbox which shows in Pegasus as totally empty even though all the FOL*****.PMI files are still in the directory that was reattached.  Tilt!  Somehow Pegasus seems to successively lose its ability to "see" the database files in the mailbox.

How can I get these files/messages to appear correctly?  Is there a fix?

A folder consists of TWO files - on with the extension .PMI, the other with the extension .PMM: are both files present for the folders you can't use?

What are the symptoms of the problem? Do the folders appear in the folder list? Can you select them and open them?

Cheers!

-- David --

I'm in the habit of separating messages by year and placing them in mailboxes with names like 2005_Mail.  Within each mailbox I've got the messages organized into folders.  Each of the directories I'm using is given the same name as the mailbox and the directories are all in the pmail "Mail" directory.....like this:  c:\pmail\mail\2005_Mail.  This gives me a convienient way to seperate mail by year and archive old messages. 

Right now I've got one directory named 2007_Mail and it is empty.  And there is another directory named 2007_Mail_NG which has 352M in 48 files, half of which are FOL****.PMI and half of which are FOL*****.PMM.  When this directory is "reattached" using the reattach mailbox command, it appears to be empty.  One folder shows up in the mailbox; the new mail folder.  No more.  When I attach the empty directory, it appears the same as the 352M one.....empty.

 When I first noticed the problem, some of the folders in the mailbox appeared to be empty. Then as I kept trying to find out what was happening, I detached and reattached the mailbox multiple times to find that more folders dissapeared and eventualy the entire mailbox appeared to be empty.

 Jim 

[quote user="James Kosalos"]

I'm in the habit of separating messages by year and placing them in mailboxes with names like 2005_Mail.  Within each mailbox I've got the messages organized into folders.  Each of the directories I'm using is given the same name as the mailbox and the directories are all in the pmail "Mail" directory.....like this:  c:\pmail\mail\2005_Mail.  This gives me a convienient way to seperate mail by year and archive old messages. 

Right now I've got one directory named 2007_Mail and it is empty.  And there is another directory named 2007_Mail_NG which has 352M in 48 files, half of which are FOL****.PMI and half of which are FOL*****.PMM.  When this directory is "reattached" using the reattach mailbox command, it appears to be empty.  One folder shows up in the mailbox; the new mail folder.  No more.  When I attach the empty directory, it appears the same as the 352M one.....empty.

 When I first noticed the problem, some of the folders in the mailbox appeared to be empty. Then as I kept trying to find out what was happening, I detached and reattached the mailbox multiple times to find that more folders dissapeared and eventualy the entire mailbox appeared to be empty.

 Jim 

[/quote]

If the folder files exist in the directory then the problem is probably corruption in the hierarch.pm.  You might try exiting Pegasus Mail, editing the hierarch.pm and removing all lines ending with "Name unavailable" and then try again.  If push come to shove you can always exit WinPMail, delete both the state.pmj and hierarch.pm and then start all over with a clean slate abeit with the loss of any tray structure you currently have.

Tom,

Definately a step forward.  Thanks.  The Hierarch.pm file was 14kb and now is 5 kb when all of the "name Unavailable" lines are deleted.  When pegasus was restarted with the edited hierarch.pm file in place, the majority (but not all) of the "invisible" files/messages reappeared, but they have appeared in "My Mailbox" and not in the reattached mailbox, "2007_Mail_NG," the one with 352M of messages; that mailbox still appears to be empty. 

When I search in C:\pmail\mail for *.PMM and *.PMI files I find that the great majority of them are in the C:\pmail\mail\2007_Mail_NG directory that was reattached and not in C:\PMAIL\Mail\ADMIN where I presume they would be located if indeed they were supposed to appear in "My Mailbox".

I think that something is still cross threaded as Pegasus is incorrectly identifying the location of the messages.  I'm waiting for your observations before I again try detaching and reattaching the 2007_Mail_NG mailbox because this operation appears to be instrumental in the "leakage" of files and directories that Pegasus is able to "see".

I'd like to try to get at the root of the problem before I go through the work of reindexing all my messages.  It's best to avoid the problem in the future.

Jim