Hi, I think there may be a problem with the color or settings in the browser. I suggest that you carry out a repair as follows http://mzl.la/15sSfJR

1. fxhelp #Firefox64SUMOWeek

Thanks for the suggestion. I had tried to select any text that might be there to get it to show up if it was white text on a white background, and there was none.

Still, I did as you suggested - thanks - but the result is the same.

Are you accumulating messages in Inbox? What is the size of your Inbox?

What is your anti-virus software?

Are you creating regular backups of your profile folder? If not, then I'd start doing that immediately. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile

Even though the message body is blank, do you see those troubled messages in the thread pane with their subject?

Hi roygrubb, since you are familiar with viewing HTML source code, do you notice any unusual duplication of tags in the problem messages?

Sometimes when a message is created by copy/pasting over and over, the content becomes nested deeper and deeper in repetitive (often unnecessary) tags. These may be <div> tags or <font> tags, or a mix of those, or possibly others.

Firefox and Thunderbird have a depth limit after which one of two things will happen: if the content is not in a table, the text will be barfed out unstylized; if the content is in a table, it will disappear.

Can you tell whether that is the problem with these messages?

I wish I knew of an "in place" fix for this longstanding problem, but I think it's going to take a program change to overcome it, and that work is proceeding slowly.

christ1 said

Are you accumulating messages in Inbox? What is the size of your Inbox? What is your anti-virus software? Are you creating regular backups of your profile folder? If not, then I'd start doing that immediately. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile Even though the message body is blank, do you see those troubled messages in the thread pane with their subject?

Thanks for suggestions.

My inbox is very large, but most emails are fine, also, this email was not in my inbox because I have a message filter that immediately directs emails from this person to another folder.

Yes, I create regular backups of my whole PC - I have had this problem for years (and reported it here before a long time ago).

I do not see the content of these messages anywhere in Thunderbird. To see the content, I have to manually edit the email file in notepad++.

jscher2000 said

Hi roygrubb, since you are familiar with viewing HTML source code, do you notice any unusual duplication of tags in the problem messages? Sometimes when a message is created by copy/pasting over and over, the content becomes nested deeper and deeper in repetitive (often unnecessary) tags. These may be <div> tags or <font> tags, or a mix of those, or possibly others. Firefox and Thunderbird have a depth limit after which one of two things will happen: if the content is not in a table, the text will be barfed out unstylized; if the content is in a table, it will disappear. Can you tell whether that is the problem with these messages? I wish I knew of an "in place" fix for this longstanding problem, but I think it's going to take a program change to overcome it, and that work is proceeding slowly.

Thanks for your helpful reply. The message does have a lot of HTML, including tables.

The sequence was that I received the email from a regular feed that I receive, sent it to my wife and she replied. The original email was visible and contained HTML correctly processed. Her reply showed up in TB as blank. Looking at the file itself in notepad++, I can see she quoted the whole email, with her reply at the top. Her corporate system is MS Exchange.

This particular email is chosen because its subject is trivial, but this sometimes happens with important emails.

I have now uploaded the email as a text file here: https://www.informationtamers.com/email.txt in case it is useful for debugging.

Hi roygrubb, the nesting of tags in that message isn't especially deep by Firefox standards. Certainly her comment and the reply header aren't deeply nested.

Maybe there is something Outlook/Exchange-specific that I can't spot at a glance.

Try to move one of the troubled messages to a different folder. Is there any difference?

christ1 said

Try to move one of the troubled messages to a different folder. Is there any difference?

Thanks.

But no, same result.

My inbox is very large

How large exactly?

Accumulating messages in Inbox isn't best practice, and it increases the risk of mail file corruption. The most common source of corruption is anti-virus software.

In your case I'd suspect some sort of corruption. You can try to rebuild the index file of the troubled folder. Right-click the folder - Properties - Repair Folder

After that reduce the size of the Inbox and move messages to other folders. You may also want to take a look at the archive feature. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/archived-messages

I had 2,900 messages in the Inbox. I've archived a lot now. Also repaired the folders concerned.

The problem is the same.

I don't think it's a corruption problem, because it only happens occasionally, and it's consistently from two accounts - 1. My wife when she's replying to something from me, quoting it, and that had HTML in the original - but not always in such cases. 2. There is one other person who emails me but this happens with an original email, not a reply.

If you download https://www.informationtamers.com/email.txt and rename it email.eml, does it show up blank when you drag it into your email client?

If you download https://www.informationtamers.com/email.txt and rename it email.eml, does it show up blank when you drag it into your email client?

It shows up blank in HTML mode. It does show the content in plain text mode though.

I don't think it's a corruption problem

You're probably right. You may want to raise a bug in Bugzilla. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

You can attach the sample message showing the problem to the bug. Please post the bug ID here when raising the bug. Thank you.

Yes, I just tried on another PC - this one running Win10, and I get the same result.

Will post bug report.

Thanks

Bug report submitted: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1517956