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Voyager Support - How to delete the flags file in Voyager

What is this 'flags' file anyway?

As you read your emails in Posty (Voyager's email program), it keeps tag of which emails have been read, answered or left unread etc. This 'message status' information is stored within a 'flags' file inside Voyager.

Each mail account has it's own flags file, as does each mailbox, such as normal (standard) email messages, stored messages and logged messages.

The primary email account (ie. your main account) uses the filename 'Email' for the flags file, whereas subsequent (additional) email accounts use the filenames 'mbox1', 'mbox2' etc etc.

All of the flags files are stored within the !Voyager.Apps.Mail.!PostyUser.Flags directory. Sometimes your flags file can become corrupted, in which case some versions of Posty can give an error such as 'File open at line xxxx' or 'End of file at line xxxx' (where xxxx is a line number). This doesn't mean that your messages are lost, but merely means that Posty has got confused and doesn't know which flags correspond to which message.

The easiest thing is to delete the relevant flags file. Posty will then automatically create a new flags file next time you try to access your email. The only side effect of this is that the message flags will all be reset, so Posty will think that none of your messages have been read. You can sort this, simply by re-reading through them all again.

How to delete the flags file

Firstly you need to open the flags directory inside Voyager. To do this, follow the steps detailed below;

1. Make sure that Voyager is not running, by Quitting from the iconbar if neccessary.

2. Locate !Voyager on your hard disc and open it by holding down SHIFT and double-clicking on it. This will open a filer window containing the various files inside Voyager itself.

3. Find the directory called 'Apps' and double-click on it. Another window will open, showing the files in this directory.

4. Find the directory called 'Mail' and double-click on it. Yet another window will open, showing the files in this directory.

5. Inside this directory should be an application directory called !PostyUser. Hold SHIFT down again and double-click on this. Another directory window will appear.

6. Inside !PostyUser should be a directory called 'Flags'. Double-click on this directory. This will open and contains the relevant flags files.

7. If it's your standard email messages which are causing the problem, then double-click on the 'Standard' directory. (Double-click on the 'Log' or 'Save' directories instead if it's the logged or stored messages respectively that are causing problems).

8. Inside the directory you just double-clicked on, you should find at least one (maybe more, if you have more than one email address) file. This will be called 'Email'. If you have additional email addresses, each subsequent one will have a file called 'mbox1', 'mbox2' etc.

9. Select the file you require (I would personally recommend selecting ALL the files) and delete it (them). If you're unsure, you can delete files by highlighting the file(s) by clicking once on them (ADJUST to select more than one file) and then clicking on MENU (middle mouse button) and moving right from File 'Email' (or Selection) and then clicking on the 'Delete' sub-menu option. Confirm the deletion if necessary.

10. If you get an error when performing step 9, such as 'File open' or suchlike, it means the file has still been left open from when Voyager gave the original error. If this is the case, OK the error message, to close the window. Then press f12 which should give you with a CLI prompt at the bottom of the screen (a small *). Type CLOSE and press return. You should get another * prompt. Now press return on it's own to return to the desktop. You should now repeat step 9, which should delete the file ok this time.

11. The rogue flags file should now be gone. For safe measure, I'd personally recommend shutting down the machine and then restarting it.

12. You can now reload Voyager and Posty in order to gain access to your previous emails. The first time you do this, you will probably find that Posty will rescan the mailbox. Don't worry about this, as it's simply rebuilding a new flags file and setting all your messages to 'Unread' status.

And that should be it. :-)

If you encounter any problems, please feel free to contact me

Corrupted messages in your inbox?

Occasionally some people have reported corrupted messages in their inbox, or messages which don't seem to correspond to the relevant message title or subject.

This can sometimes occur if you receive a message with a corrupted or non standard attachment (most often caused by the prevalence of PC viruses being sent around at the moment). Although PC viruses won't affect RISC OS users, they are still inconvenient because a) they still take time to download and b) they're likely to contain non standard attachments which may appear as screenfulls of gobbledegook!

The only easy way to sort out the message file so that the messages re-correspond to their respective titles etc is to wipe the flags file above, which may fix the problem. If it doesn't fix the problem, I would advise going through your inbox and deleting all non essential emails in order to make Posty have the minimum number of emails stored within it's database. Then repeat the process of wiping the flags and see if that fixes the problem.

You should then repeat this process as neccessary, until your emails are restored to their normal action.

Lost messages?

Occasionally, when you wipe the flags file you may find that one or more recent messages appear to have disappeared. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the *CLOSE action when you force RISC OS to close any open files - it will discard any data currently stored in the file buffers.

If wiping the flasg file, described above, doesn't fix the problem, you may find that your most recent messages are stored within a backup file inside !Voyager.

To see if this is the case, wipe the flags file as described above and then ensure that Voyager is not running - ie. not on the iconbar.

Then open the !Voyager directory (by holding shift down and double-clicking on the !Voyager application in your filer window). Then open the Apps directory. Then open the Mail directory. Lastly, open the Transport directory.

If there is a file there called Backup then you may be in luck and can recover the previously 'lost' emails. If there isn't, then unfortunately it would appear that there are no emails to recover.

If there is a Backup file, then continue....

Open the InComming directory and copy the Backup file into there. Then rename the copy to Email.

To summarise, you want to copy the !Voyager.Apps.Mail.Transport.Backup file into !Voyager.Apps.Mail.Transport.InComming.Email

Once you've done that, you should shutdown and restart the machine, then re-load Voyager and it should think you've receievd new emails and debatch them again. They should now appear when you load Posty.

Again, if you encounter any problems, please feel free to contact me

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Last edit: 10th Apr 2016 at 1:45pm
(2900 days ago)

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