Moving 4800 Emails Doesn't Move and Adds Duplicates

Problem reported by Opt-Out - 2/23/2015 at 12:23 AM

Submitted

A customer complained she had a problem moving a large number of emails at once. She said she was using webmail. To recreate the problem I restored her inbox and then, using webmail, I created a a root folder called 2014 and a sub of 2014 called 4th Quarter.

Next I went to her inbox which had about 9600 emails in it. I selected about 1/2 of those emails And moved them to 2014 > 4th Quarter.

What did I end up with after moving 4800 emails in one move? 9600 emails still in the inbox and over 10,000 emails in the 2014 > 4th Quarter folder.

Curious if anyone else has experienced a similar problem when moving a large number of email items?

*SmarterMail Enterprise Edition Version 13.2.5511

17 Replies

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Paul Blank Replied

2/23/2015 at 10:31 AM

YES! And I've seen it happen more than once, usually after another (successful) move, with SM v11.x. The messages are sometimes copied rather than moved.

I have learned to check the source folder to make sure those messages are not still there after the "move", deleting them if they are.

I have not, however, seen the duplication that you mention. Sounds like, in both cases (messages copied and not moved, and the duplication issue), something in the "move" process is timing out, and SM may be re-trying the operation. But I'm really not sure exactly why this occurs.

Comments, ST?

Employee Replied

2/24/2015 at 10:14 AM

Employee Post

Opt-Out, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Unfortunately, I have been unable to replicate the issue. I have a 4.5 GB test account with over 50,000 emails. In the web interface, I have been able to move varying number of messages (the most being 39,600 messages that I tried) between folders without message duplication, timing out, etc.

If the issue persists, you may consider opening a ticket with our support team. It could possibly be an issue with your client's mail account. If it is found that SM has a bug, your ticket will be refunded.

Opt-Out Replied

2/24/2015 at 10:22 AM

Thank you for testing this. I'll copy the user account and do some more testing. If I discover anything new I'll let you know.

Paul Blank Replied

2/24/2015 at 10:35 AM

Robert, I must re-iterate: I've seen it happen on at least 4 occasions with SM v11.6. And all of these moves (that were NOT moves) were attempted from the SM webmail interface and NOT Outlook, T-Bird or the like. BTW note that I'm just affirming the issue. We are all aware of that wonderful situation where you (all too often) present a tech with a problem and they can't replicate it. It's just the nature of things.

Employee Replied

2/24/2015 at 10:44 AM

Employee Post

Thank you for your comment, Paul. I'm not trying to belittle or discount the problem. With my testing, I have been unable to replicate the issue. Sometimes issues like this are sometimes tied to errors specific messages and cause SM to hang up and behave strangely. When we are able to test against the actual troublesome account, we are more likely to replicate the error and find a solution. Again, thank you for you comments though.

Paul Blank Replied

2/24/2015 at 10:51 AM

Understood. In my case, SM did not apparently hang; the messages were in both mailboxes after the operation though; there was no indication that anything was actually wrong except for that. Moving to 13,x shortly. We'll see if I experience the issue again.

Steve Reid Replied

2/24/2015 at 11:40 AM

Are you sure you smartermail files have the right permissions associated? It seems like the Smartermail process is unable to modify/delete

Paul Blank Replied

2/24/2015 at 12:33 PM

Well, yep. Coz (usually) the Move operations complete just fine. Its just *sometimes* that this problem has reared its ugly head! Seems to be random BUT typically after a successful move, while attempting a move of several thousand messages

Steve Reid Replied

2/25/2015 at 7:49 AM

Seems like something on your server is interfering with the process.

Paul Blank Replied

2/25/2015 at 7:55 AM

Indeed. But it's a lightly-loaded server - only 30 or so users, 8GB RAM, fully-patched Server 2003 x64, 3GHz dual-core Intel CPU, and plenty fast 3Ware PCIe controller with RE4 drives in RAID 1 config. And neither SM nor Windows report any errors. Since I don't see the duplication problem that was mentioned, this qualifies as an annoyance rather than a major bug to me.

Jacques Milon Replied

3/18/2015 at 11:38 AM

I have had this happen to numerous customers also. Just happened on the latest version 13.3.5535 as well as past versions. Happens when they click on delete all, and the entire inbox get put into the deleted folder, and then they move them back to the inbox, and creates the duplicates instead of moving them. They try it a few times, and creates duplicates on top of duplicates. Moving a few hundred at a time works, but if it's over a couple thousand messages, it creates the problem. This was done using the webmail interface.

Paul Blank Replied

4/19/2015 at 6:09 AM

Follow-up: I have not yet moved to 13.x because of the constant webmail disconnects that have been reported. Too many users are on webmail here. When this is cleared up, perhaps I'll do that upgrade.

Brantz Replied

7/23/2015 at 10:37 AM

I just ran into this as well, I started with these two folders on SmarterMail 14.0:

"Inbox" folder: contained 21414 messages
"Inbox Archive" folder: contained 730 messages

I selected a year's worth of message in the inbox (18110 messages) and did a "move" of them to the "Inbox Archive" folder. The job took a long time - ~2 hrs and after the move request I see the following:

"Inbox" folder: 21425 messages (some new messages arrived)
"Inbox Archive" folder: 18840 messages

Upon examination, I see that all of the messages I requested to move are now in both folders, so it

appears that a "copy" happened as opposed to a "move". However, when I select a small number of messages and do the same procedure it does work as a true "move" operation.

Any more thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Brantz

Paul Blank Replied

7/23/2015 at 11:59 AM

Kinda surprised that this hasn't been fixed by now. If SM is not deleting those "moved" messages until after a successful move, and is unable to do so, there should be an on-screen message to that effect (OR how about an email to whomever is performing the move - after all, they need to be logged in to do the move!) - that the operation was not fully completed?).

Jim Rosemary Replied

11/27/2016 at 4:49 PM

Still experiencing this issue, even with SM 15.3. When we move thousands of messages using the "Actions: Move" menu function, we wind up with duplicates in the destination folder and the originals still in the original folder. Seems to happen above 2-3K messages. Any progress on a fix?

Jim Rosemary New Tech Web, Inc.

Paul Blank Replied

11/27/2016 at 5:12 PM

I have no verified fix for this problem. However, you should perhaps double the available disk space setting for the user whose emails you're moving. You can always change it back after the move, giving SM a few minutes to "settle down" first.

Jim Rosemary Replied

11/27/2016 at 10:36 PM

We don't limit the disk space at all. So it's not a space issue.

Jim Rosemary New Tech Web, Inc.

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