email-filter disappeared completely - how to reset? Why does this happen frequently?

email-filter disappeared completely - how to reset? Why does this happen frequently?

The setup:
- Windows Professional XP SP 3
- Opera 10.51, build 3315, updated some weeks ago, ran mostly stable so far
- German system use, German Opera use

Opera is used for both emailing and browsing:
1. The Operay appearance has a setup different to the standard: It shows menus and the Main Bar. I have removed certain buttons and added specific bookmarks (e.g. metacrawler, wikipedia etc.) to the 'My buttons' section in Appearance/Buttons and from there to the Main Bar.
2. In browsing I have typically quite a number of browser-windows open, my bookmark list is also extensive but organized.
3. My email history covers 3000+ mails, ranging back to somewhat 2007 or longer. Basically all email messages are filtered in filters and sub-filters, that I had defined (e.g. 'friends and family' etc.), just about 20 recent messages are shown in the 'unread'-folder, but in black, i.e. had been opened already. The 'Sent'-folder contains all sent email, no filter has been applied to them anytime.
The contact list contains a vast number of contacts from all the emailing.

The issue:
A few days ago I shut down the computer: all in a stable, organized manner, i.e. shutting down the various programs incl. Opera and then shutting down Windows. No failures, no specific issues occurred.

A few hours later I rebooted the system, it hang up before coming fully into operation. However I did not start Opera.
I rebooted the PC again, everything was fine. Booted Opera - and found a 'naked' setup as if newly installed:
1. no customized toolbars etc.: menu bar not shown, Main bar is off, all personal buttons have disappeared from the Appearance/Button settings
2. contacts and bookmarks are still existing, however all browser windows (i.e. the last session) are gone
3. email, the key challenge now:
- all 3000+ mails are fully unread i.e. all shown in the 'Unread'-folder and displayed in blue
- all personal filters have disappeared, i.e. there is no single filter existing anymore in the mail panel
- the sent emails folder is empty

My trials so far:
I do not worry about the appearance or the last session or the personal buttons, this can be re-setup easily.
However the email-status is a huge concern now. I tried several ways to re-configure the emails: I made a back up copy of the latest 'corrupt' Opera folder both in Window application data and in local settings/application data. Then I
- deleted all non-filtered mails and imported via import function from a backup I had done in early March: no filters are shown with these 'original' and clean mails (i.e. the filter itself is not contained the email database?!)
- replaced in Windows the entire Opera folders in application data and in local settings/application data by the backup copy: did not work at all
- replaced the in Windows the indexer folder and files by the backup version: no filters

My question:
Are / where are the 'filters' stored and managed? I could not find specifically in the forum or Opera paths description
Can the filter be re-installed by any kind of import (such as mail, contacts or bookmarks) or replacing the corrupt file by a backup file?
How should I proceed?

What I wonder about:
Comparable incidents happened several times already:
- my Operay appearance crashed already several times resulting in blank toolbars etc. as above, however the email was never affected
- my wife's Opera (same system setup) had the disappearence of filters already several times... especially after upgrading to a never version....

Possible root cause:
Is it possible, that Opera, while and even beyond shutting down, did still some (hidden) maintenance work, like it is sometimes asking at shut down via a specific message window, but possibly not asking this time?
If this maintenance is ongoing while the user shuts down Windows in a next step, could that damage the database integrity and result in the loss of data as described above???

Thanks for any help,
Diethelm

... some more setup details:
I use POP3 email

The email shown in my filters had been 'moved' to such filters via right-clicking and 'show-in' function, then I marked the email as 'read' via 'K' so that it disappeared from 'unread', but still shown in 'received'.

I understand the mail-database functionality, that the 'show-in' command adds the attribute of e.g. 'friends and family' or 'business' to the selected email (and consequently shows up in this filter = view from now on).
If now due to Opera crash all such filters = rules how to view the mail-database are gone, how can I reset the filters or view-rules? I assume that the attributes in the individual mail messages are still existing, but the filter or view-rule in the mail panel is gone.
Following this understanding I had once after such email crash at my wifes PC defined a new filter named 'hockey' and all in a sudden certain emails belonging to the hockey topic showed up in this filter - great! However this did not work out for all various filter names... reason might be that I could not recall all names correctly or the still existing mail attributes did not correspond fully to such a new filter/view rule.
Anyway, for my database I'm not in a position to restablish or name correctly 50+ different filters which I did operate previously, since I can't see them anymore....

Actually, this incident seems to be very identical with
- the request posted here on March 18 of user 'mberey' under the title of 'Filters Vanished'... unfortunately there was no follow up possible due to missing information...
- the request posted here (Reported as bug DSK-292116) from dracula78 on March 30 ref. 'Importing mail always creates another account': does also happen to me now while recreating my old mailbase the 'import settings' section is grayed out and then a new account 'account-name1 (2)' is created regardless of importing from 'account-name1' to the chosen 'account-name1'...

It sounds like issues with your OS/hardware caused some file corruption that affected Opera's files (and probably other files on your hard drive). You can explore that possibility by reading http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265

As for filters, they should stay unless Opera's index files are corrupted or the filters in the filters folder (if present) are corrupted. That could happen because of the above or because of Opera not shutting down correctly (because it froze, or you killed it, or the OS killed it as you were shutting down the OS) or because anti-virus is blocking writes to the files.

Note though that filters are not very portable. You can't export them and you can't import them. They must travel along with the index files they're referenced in. You can keep your filters through an upgrade though. But, you may lose them if you mess with the index files. As for using a mail folder that was backed up a long time ago, that should work unless the mail folder is so old that it uses outdated formats/settings that Opera no longer uses or has to convert. If that's the case, the conversion process might not take filters into account.

Start with a fresh version of Opera (the latest 10.52 snapshot for example) installed separately with a fresh profile and fresh mail folder etc. Set up your mail account settings manually without importing any messages. Set up your filters. Then, only use that Opera for new messages that you receive. See if you still have problems with filters then.

You can always try to set opera:config#consistency to 0 and close down Opera to see if the maintenance helps.

If a filter is messed up, you can go in it's properties and try to reapply the filter. If not, you'll have to delete the filter and recreate it.

Thanks Burnout for your always helpful and informative support!

I have found out that all mail-filter or -folder information is stored in the index file. This file seemed to be in good and up to date shape. However it looks like the path or location information of Opera mail had got messed up - potentially due to my normal Windows shut-down (see below). Obviously the actual location was still 'username.../application data/.../mail/... ' as usual in the old Opera versions, even if I run the latest version 10.51.
After the Opera crash it seems that Opera was using now the new standard path information of 'username.../local settings/application data/.../mail/... ' and therefor could not find any filter information, as this index file was empty! By replacing the empty index file I finally succeeded to get back my latest filters/folders.

Unfortunately the link of index file to the individual mail was also corrupted - so I could not re-establish the mails being filtered/'foldered' correctly....

At the end I have now completely erased the previous Opera setup in order to avoid any trouble of old or new storage locations... (un-install and erase of registry and any Opera folders) and installed newly from scratch. Then replaced the index file (to have empty filters available) and imported mail for the various accounts, bookmarks and contacts. The remaining task is now to filter all 7000+ mails of the last 5 years...

Key question to the Opera team remains: can Opera still be processing e.g. the mail database after closure, even if that is not asked for via specific message (e.g. "want to do maintenance for up to 5 minutes yes/no")? This seems to me the case, because sometimes, if you want to re-open right after closure, you get an error message that the files are still in use and can't get accessed! In such case I assume the shutdown of Windows right after closure of Opera crashes the hidden maintenance?...

Thanks again and best regards
dietmeister

Originally posted by dietmeister:

However it looks like the path or location information of Opera mail had got messed up

Just mentioned this at http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=514341

Originally posted by dietmeister:

This seems to me the case, because sometimes, if you want to re-open right after closure, you get an error message that the files are still in use and can't get accessed!

Opera just takes a long time to shut down completely that's all. There are lots of things to save before closing. And, if you use Mail, it takes a little bit longer than usual beause mail things have to be saved too. But, even if you don't use mail, if your system doesn't have a lot of memory and Opera swaps a lot to disk, when you close Opera, Opera has to pull all that in from disk to clean it up before closing, which can take a while. The longer you have Opera open, the more that this might be the case.

For the database consistency check, it should only do that if you approve it. Perhaps there's a bug with that though.