Identifying mail files that failed to import

Kevin04

I'm currently trying to migrate my mails from Opera Mail to Vivaldi. As synchronizing via IMAP is not an option for a couple of former mail accounts, I need to import their mails from files.

After configuring an offline account in Vivaldi Mail, I right click on its INBOX, choose Import Files..., select my 885 copied mbs files and finally click open to start the import. 15 seconds later, I get the following message:

Mail Import File
Finished importing 884 messages. Failed adding 1 message. See logs in Mail Status for details.

Sure enough, I have 884 new messages in that inbox, that's good. However, The Logs-tab under Mail Status is empty, it just says No Logs to show yet.. I tried to debug and look for some kind of log file to find out which of my mails hasn't been imported and why, but I can't find anything.

Is there a way to identify the failed files? I'm running the latest stable version of Vivaldi using Windows 10.

yojimbo274064400

@Kevin04,

The message likely referred to a duplicate emails. To confirm this is the case consider trying either:

permanently remove the imported messages by deleting and then emptying theTrash folder
– or –
creating a new profile and set mail up there
press Ctrl+E and type settings in the Quick Commands dialogue
select Settings under Commands section
in Settings search field type biscuit
amend Logging Level to Info as highlighted below:
repeat import
hopefully logs in Mail Status will show something this time, for example:

Once satisfied with knowing cause restore Log Level setting

mossman

Both Opera and Vivaldi store mails in a date-organised file tree (account\year\month\day)

It might take a bit of time, but you could manually track down the missing message just by comparing the number of files. E.g. (in Windows):

right-click year 2024 in the Opera files, select properties and see how many files there are
repeat for the Vivaldi files, compare numbers
if the same, repeat for 2023
if different, repeat for January, etc. etc.

Eventually you will have isolated one day where there is one more message in the Opera files than the Vivaldi files - now you can open these files in a text editor and see what they are... then you can isolate the missing one and hopefully understand why it didn't import (e.g. it's a duplicate). If the file or the headers are corrupt then you might be able to manually edit it and try importing just that message (and now you know the title and date so you can check it imports).

Kevin04

@yojimbo274064400 Thanks, that's what I've been looking for! Setting The log level to info was sufficient to find the culprit. It was a duplicate mail indeed, only internal stuff added by Opera Mail differed, the actual content was identical. The error should still be visible in the log by default, as indicated by the message, though.

@mossman Thanks for your suggestion too! I had considered something similar, importing in a binary search way, to narrow the candidates down step-by-step, but it would have been a lot of work especially if more errors popped up with my other mailboxes. So I'm glad there's a way to increase logging verbosity.

yojimbo274064400

@Kevin04 said in Identifying mail files that failed to import:

@yojimbo274064400 Thanks, that's what I've been looking for! Setting The log level to info was sufficient to find the culprit. It was a duplicate mail indeed, only internal stuff added by Opera Mail differed, the actual content was identical. The error should still be visible in the log by default, as indicated by the message, though.
⋮

I agree, the error should be visible in the logs by default, i.e. at Warning level. Consider reporting as bug, Report a Bug | Vivaldi Browser, and then posting resulting VB reference here.

Kevin04

@yojimbo274064400 Yeah, I reported it as a bug and it got logged as VB-109707.