Rename Folders problem in Netscape 7.1

I have a user who tried to rename a folder with subfolders. I don't know the exact sequence of events, but it went something like this: renamed folder A to B. Added a subfolder to B (call it C). Original subfolders of A did not show up under B, so renamed B back to A. Now in Explorer, we see two mail folders, A and B (with subfolder C). In Nescape we see only a folder named A, however its contents are not of the original A but of B (with the newly added subfolder C).

I've copied the contents of original A folder to B and now B has everything it should have. The weird thing is that Nescape shows "B" as "A ". Make sense?

When you rename a folder in Netscape, does it actually rename the folder or does it record some kind of mapping to the actual name on the hard drive?

Thanks for any insight.

 

I did a test with Seamonkey1.0, which would give the same results as NS7.1, as the format is the same.
I did not rename one of the original, "given" name, files, but I did the following.
I created a new folder, with some unpleasant mail, and called it "Unpleasant ". I moved three e-mails from the Inbox into the new folder. Since the reason for the unpleasantness was solved, I renamed the folder to "Solved ". There was only a solved and solved.msf folder in Explorer. Then, being from two different people, I created a subfolder of Solved, but in Netscape, I had, still three e-mails in Solved, and nothing in the subfolder. This is no surprise, because to create something, and putting nothing in it, has the expected effect. Then I dragged and drop the desired e-mail in the subfolder, and it showed 2 e-mails in Solved and one in the subfolder. In Netscape the size of Solved did not changed, until I compacted it, indicating that the moved mail had still been associated to the main folder. The final count in Seamonkey was 2 e-mails and 12Kb in Solved, and one 4Kb e-mail in the subfolder. In Explorer, I had a solved file of 12 Kb, and a solved.msf file. And, a solved.sbd folder containing the single e-mail, with a pair of files. This is the proper procedure, and what is in Netscape, is matched on the hard drive. Renaming in Netscape is for internal use only, unless you follow certain procedures.
You can rename a profile in Netscape, but you will not see an equivalent name in the hard drive.

 

Thanks for your reply! I am confused, though. You say renaming is for internal use only (above), yet you renamed a folder in your example.

Is it not possible to rename a Netscape folder with subfolders in it? Is that my problem? It seems like it should have worked just fine, but as I said, I don't exactly know what my user did. Maybe we should have created a new folder and moved everything (subfolders and messages) into it, but that rename function should work, too.

Thanks!

 

From what I tested it seems that the subfolders is the problem. The reason is that they associated with the old name, in their .sbd folder. As I saw, assuming that we have folder A, and renamed it to B, you should find only the B and B.msf file, but any subfolder would remain in A.sbd. Only after creating a subfolder in B, and moving the mail there, things looked ok.
This has never been a problem for me, because I split up the contents of certain folders and even subfolders, and, i don't do wholesale renaming.
But, I can see that the Netscape system can be confusing. For instance, when I set up the account, I give it some name that I can remember. e.g I have Cox, and incoming mail is in pop.central.cox.net, but I call the account Cox, but my selection is not carried to the hard drive. Having four usernames, I call the others Cox2, Cox3 and Cox4, but the hard drive has them in the order that I added them, so Cox4 is pop.central.cox.net, and Cox is pop.central.cox.net-3, etc. At times, I don't know which I account I am using. Yes, I can rename the account to my specs, and then I have to change the path in the Local Directory, but this is irritating, if not confusing.

 

Yup, that's exactly what we saw when we messed around with it just now. The subfolders don't follow the parent folder that was renamed.

What we did (there are probably more ways to do this) was rename the parent folder in Netscape, then in Explorer we renamed the parent folder again (since it's name hadn't changed). That caused the subfolders so associate with the correct new name and then all was fine Maybe 7.2 works better?

Thanks for your help!

 

Unfortunately, there has been no change. I was using Seamonkey, which is the latest generation, and it does the same thing. May be we are all ignorant, but that is as much as I know.