Be careful with Mass delete or Remove Duplicates

SaintGermain · 2 Mar 2017, 10:48 PM

Hello,

I just migrated all my accounts to Fastmail and I have been bitten by 2 bugs/features of Fastmail "Mass delete or Remove Duplicates".

1) The Trash is considered as a normal folder and will be taken into account when looking for duplicates (Remove duplicates messages based on messages in all folders). So if you remove some duplicate manually, and then use the Mass remove duplicates, you can expect your last copy of an email to be deleted as well (because the email is already in Trash).

In my case I manually deleted a whole folder (because it was only copy of other emails) and then run the Mass remove duplicates. All my emails disappear...

This is not considered as a bug by Fastmail. I find this a bit strange but well... Remember to empty the Trash before using the Mass remove duplicates...

2) Some email clients allow to limit the size of downloaded email (in order to save bandwidth), for instance to 50kb. When an email size is bigger than 50kb, the email client only download the first 50kb (partial download).
We can still download the full email by clicking on a 'Download full email' button.
However when downloading the full email, we end up with 2 email : one partial download and one full download (with the same message ID).
In this case it seems that 'Mass remove duplicates' randomly choose one or the other to remove.

In my case it strangely always chooses the full download to delete.

Fastmail is currently looking into it but there is no guarantee that something will be implemented/corrected.

I hope that will help people migrating to Fastmail !

PON · 5 Mar 2017, 01:50 AM

Wow.

I have used Fastmail's dedupe quite a bit and been a bit frustrated at the differences between it and what's reported by a couple of Thunderbird extensions I've tried. I was dealing with large numbers of messages and a slow link so testing / comparing was difficult. In the end I went with Fastmail's count betting it would be the most reliable. Now it seems I might have lost data as result of having deleted test data!

I'd be interested to know if anyone using Office365 can comment on its capabilities in this area. I gathered the other day that distribution list sync works with Office 365.

Terry · 7 Mar 2017, 09:39 AM

You do know you can receive all your deleted items, F/m does have a back up system.....and its free.

PON · 8 Mar 2017, 12:00 AM

Yes, I did.

It's some months ago now. I just wish I knew to empty the deleted items folder.

My Internet link is slow (3Mb) and I just can't afford to spend the time on this; ... identifying discrepancies wouldn't be a quick task.

2 Mar 2017, 10:48 PM	#1
SaintGermain Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 25	Be careful with Mass delete or Remove Duplicates Hello, I just migrated all my accounts to Fastmail and I have been bitten by 2 bugs/features of Fastmail "Mass delete or Remove Duplicates". 1) The Trash is considered as a normal folder and will be taken into account when looking for duplicates (Remove duplicates messages based on messages in all folders). So if you remove some duplicate manually, and then use the Mass remove duplicates, you can expect your last copy of an email to be deleted as well (because the email is already in Trash). In my case I manually deleted a whole folder (because it was only copy of other emails) and then run the Mass remove duplicates. All my emails disappear... This is not considered as a bug by Fastmail. I find this a bit strange but well... Remember to empty the Trash before using the Mass remove duplicates... 2) Some email clients allow to limit the size of downloaded email (in order to save bandwidth), for instance to 50kb. When an email size is bigger than 50kb, the email client only download the first 50kb (partial download). We can still download the full email by clicking on a 'Download full email' button. However when downloading the full email, we end up with 2 email : one partial download and one full download (with the same message ID). In this case it seems that 'Mass remove duplicates' randomly choose one or the other to remove. In my case it strangely always chooses the full download to delete. Fastmail is currently looking into it but there is no guarantee that something will be implemented/corrected. I hope that will help people migrating to Fastmail !

5 Mar 2017, 01:50 AM	#2
PON Essential Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wicklow, Ireland Posts: 449	Wow. I have used Fastmail's dedupe quite a bit and been a bit frustrated at the differences between it and what's reported by a couple of Thunderbird extensions I've tried. I was dealing with large numbers of messages and a slow link so testing / comparing was difficult. In the end I went with Fastmail's count betting it would be the most reliable. Now it seems I might have lost data as result of having deleted test data! I'd be interested to know if anyone using Office365 can comment on its capabilities in this area. I gathered the other day that distribution list sync works with Office 365.

7 Mar 2017, 09:39 AM	#3
Terry The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: VK4 Posts: 3,012	You do know you can receive all your deleted items, F/m does have a back up system.....and its free.

8 Mar 2017, 12:00 AM	#4
PON Essential Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wicklow, Ireland Posts: 449	Yes, I did. It's some months ago now. I just wish I knew to empty the deleted items folder. My Internet link is slow (3Mb) and I just can't afford to spend the time on this; ... identifying discrepancies wouldn't be a quick task.