How to Manually Trigger the Database Consistency Check

If you have ghosts (entries in a message list that point to messages that no longer exist), you can manually trigger the database consistency check to *try* and get rid of the problems.

Set the Mail Database Consistency Check Time to 0, save the change, close Opera and choose OK to perform the maintenance. Opera will then check the database and remove any ghosts.

Note: If using the new standalone Opera Mail, you'll have to close down Opera, edit operaprefs.ini in the preferences directory (see "help -> about opera mail" for the location) and add Mail Database Consistency Check Time=0 under [Mail]. Then, you can start Opera. Then, when you close down Opera, it'll ask if you want to do maintenance.

This could take a minute, so be patient. But, note that Opera gives no indication when it's finished. You just have to watch disk activity caused by Opera to finish.

When it's finished though, Opera will update "recovery.log" in the mail folder with the results of the check. For example, it will tell you if any ghosts were removed and whether things in the database are consistent or not.

Once the check is finished, you can start Opera again.

The "Mail Database Consistency Check Time" will reset to a high number after you start Opera. This is normal, so don't worry about it.

Now, the database consistency check might be able to repair a few other problems too. So, if you think your problem might be database-related, you can try this to see if it helps. Just note that it won't fix severe problems, so don't get your hopes up.

Note that when Opera repairs the indexer and database files etc., it might create new files with the corruption omitted. But, if your database and indexer were messed up bad enough, this might cause you to lose entries in the database and index. If this happens, when you start Opera back up, some or all of your messages could go missing. They'd still be in the mail folder. You'd just have to fix it the hard way. So, it's best to backup your mail folder and contacts.adr while Opera is closed before doing the database check. That way, if the check and repair yields missing messages (because your mail files were so messed up to begin with) you can restore your corrupted mail folder and deal with the corruption you had previously until you have time to fix the mail folder the hard way.