Cannot dismiss reminders for recurring events

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] from comment #56)
> What I need is 1) enable debugging prefs
> and restart 2) wait for alarm and clear logs 3) dismiss alarm, do nothing
> until it appears again 4) save all logs to a text file and attach here.
> Also, description about specific type of event this happens with, e.g.
> meeting invitations created by others, and information about the caldav
> server.

I just created that log and could send it to you. I'd prefer not to post it as I would prefer not having to remove all personal details / email addresses etc. Does that make sense?
The reminder doesn't even disappear at all. I wonder if it might've to do with the fact that the reminder is added for an email list that I'm a member in, but it's not directly addressed to me.

I had this problem. Struggled with it for months. Tried to dismiss certain recurring events with no luck. They popped back up and when tried to dismiss I would get that "Item has recently been changed on the server ..." pop-up box. So, I looked into my T-bird Profiles folder (it's usually located on path: C:\Users\{your user name}\Appdata\roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\{xxxxx}.default) Inside that *.default folder you will find a folder titled "calendar-data". When you open that folder you will see 3 *.sqlite files. These are the databases where your calendar stuff is located. The biggest of these, in my case, was the file titled "cashe.sqlite" You will need to be able to access the data in this file because it contains all of the event data for your lightning calendar.

To access this file I recommend getting the Firefox add-on called, "SQLite Manager". After installation you will be able to open this add-on by clicking on the tools menu in Firefos. Load the cashe.sqlite file and look through all of the data. What I found was what I suspected I would find; the recurring event that I was trying to dismiss had a double entry. In other words, this cashe.sqlite file had somehow gotten corrupted. Don't know how and don't care how. The main thing is the fix. There is an option in SQLite Manager that allows you to delete any item, i.e., event, from the data base. I simply found the double entries and deleted both of them! And, VOILA! When I restarted T-bird and the lightning calendar the unwanted items, i.e., all of the unwanted recurring events, were GONE! from the calendar. Bottom line: it's not a problem with T-bird or with the Lightning add-on. IMHO it has to do with something that causes a corruption of the cashe.sqlite calendar data file. In my case, I believe it happened when I messed up (don't know how) porting calendar data from Win XP to Win 7 ... or something like that. Anyway, I hope this fix works for you. And it should work for any non-dismissable event. Good luck!

So a proper fix should prevent creation of duplicate entries and in a safe way remove any exiting duplicate entries.

(In reply to Pander from comment #61)
> So a proper fix should prevent creation of duplicate entries and in a safe
> way remove any exiting duplicate entries.

Pander,

First, I should mention that I was using a Google calendar with the Provider for Google calendar add-on to create the calendar in Lightning before the bug showed up. And the event that I could not dismiss or snooze was not to be found in the Google calendar itself even though that same event showed up in Thunderbird Lightning calendar. This is what gave me the idea that the data that Lightning was using had to be coming from some other source than directly from the Google calendar itself. And that's when I tracked down the cashe.sqlite file within my Profiles, calendar-data folder.

I thought that even if I totally destroyed the cashe.sqlite it didn't matter because I could still rebuild it by starting with a fresh install of a blank Lightning calendar and use Provider (or the built-in Ligthning feature of the latest version of T-bird) to pull the data from my Google calendar back in. Plus, obviously you should backup the cashe.sqlite before you modify or otherwise tinker with it.

Actually, I thought about this a lot today and recalled that at one point, after creating a recurring weekly event with a recurring reminder, I believe that I tried to modify a single instance ("This event only") and that it might have been after this that the bug appeared. So, it may have been a bug in the Lightning add-on after all that caused it to be created, i.e., trying to modify one instance of a recurring event possibly caused duplicate entries in the cashe.sqlite database file. This should not happen, of course.

But removing duplicate events from the cashe.sqlite file makes sense as a fix to the problem. You dismiss one of the reminders, but the other one pops up and says, "Guess what? I'm still here." and recreates itself again.

I still have recurring events in my calendar that work fine and were not affected by removing the duplicates of the event that I no longer wanted. At the same time it is a simple matter to just recreate the removed recurring event in the normal way in Lightning if you still want to have it.

So, I believe the short answer to your question is that the fix should cure the "can't dismiss or snooze" a reminder bug if it is caused by duplicate entries in the cashe.sqlite database file. But if you can't find a duplicate entry in the cashe.sqlite database and are still having this problem, then it is a different bug from the one that my fix solves. But I cannot promise that duplicate events won't show up in the future from the bug that caused the duplicate events in the first place. Hope all of this helps.

Thanks for your elaboration. In any case, a final solution should not require a user to do anything with the file cashe.sqlite himself or herself. For the average user this is too technical or difficult to do. for debugging this issue this, it is an important point to the developers that are going to tackle this. Perhaps a new bug should be split off from this one doing frequent cache housekeeping? Throwing out also related garbage.

Yes, yes. I see your point. Probably the fault is mine for calling it a "fix." I undoubtedly should have called it a "work-around" because it really does not cure whatever caused the duplicate entries in the first place.

My work-around just gives the poor user a way to stop the annoying phenomenon of not being bothered by those undismissable and un-snoozable pop-up reminders without having to un-tick the "Show missed events" option. Know what I mean?

Thanks for your feedback and clarifying remarks. I still hope that some somewhat sophisticated users can employ this work-around in order to get a little relief. In the meantime, I hope the developers (I am clearly NOT one) can use what I documented in order to come up with a real fix. Maybe they already knew about it. Lightning is a damn fine T-bird add-on. And I never once considered stopping using it. There's nothing out there that does as good a job or has as many of Lightning's wonderful features.

The workaround that works for me is to go to the web Google Calendar and delete the reminder there. Then it stops from popping up again.

In my case there was no reminder to delete from the Google calendar. It was clean and did not have the event in it for which the undismissable reminder was showing up. I am guessing that the "Server" where the information had "recently changed" is actually in the cashe.sqlit file. So, Lightning was using an un-updated "server", i.e., the cashe.sqlite file, from which to get the reminder information.

But I am certainly glad to hear that you were able to find a much easier fix.

Let's keep in mind that the issue isn't related to Google Calendar: I had exactly the same issue in the course of my professional life during the past many years with Exchange, Zimbra and Google Calendar.

This said, good job orchond! That should indeed bring some developer much nearer to a solution, which should allow us to get a fix after those many years of waiting.

And I agree with what was said, there are two things to do:
1. add a housekeeping function to the cache routines to remove duplicate entries and other inconsistencies
2. find out how the cache get corrupted and remove the root cause

But the first approach might hide underlying issues, so that the 2nd becomes more difficult to tackle.

I agree with you, Eric. Got to eliminate the root cause 1st, then don't need to clean up the cashe. What threw me off was the word "server" in the message box that popped up on an unsuccessful attempt to dismiss the reminder. When you see "server" you think, "Oh, must be a remote server on Google Calendar." In my case they were talking about the cashe file being used as the server for the Lightning calendar. Thanks for your comments.

i have (had) the same problem with Thunderbird 45.3 and Exchange on Windows 7 PC .

There where only 2 files in the mentioned folder \calendar-data\ . One was "delted.sqlite" and one local.sqlite.

As i have no clue, how to turn on logging i tried delting both files. This worked for me. After that only "local.sqlite" reappeared until i dismissed the old calendar reminder, then "delted.sqlite" appeared too.

I noticed this problem always appears after a password change on Exchange and mail login, if you didn't dismiss the invite before the password change (company policy... every 3 month^^ ).

Hi Blubber,
Hmmm .... Your situation at least seems to confirm that "server" means something other than a remote server and in reality means entries in a .sqlite file within \calendar-data\. Nice.

Same issue over here with Thunderbird 45.3.0, Lightning 4.7.3 on a Macbook with OS X El Capitan 10.11.6. Cannot dismiss reminders for recurring CalDav events. Pop-up keeps reappearing many times.

(In reply to Frank from comment #71)
> Same issue over here with Thunderbird 45.3.0, Lightning 4.7.3 on a Macbook
> with OS X El Capitan 10.11.6. Cannot dismiss reminders for recurring CalDav
> events. Pop-up keeps reappearing many times.

consider voting for this bug above to increase its prominence!

Additionally, Mozilla should do more reporting on bug votes per project. As I understood, and correct my if I am wrong, at the moment not many people are looking at votes.

To add information to the mix, I see precisely the same (recurrent notification) problem since I began using Radicale as the CalDAV server (http://radicale.org/) to consolidate our local calendars (ics) some months back. I've been blaming Radicale, but the symptoms are just as folks have been describing for other servers, so the finger points to Thunderbird/Lightening.

I've disabled 'offline support' for the calendars to avoid creating the cache files (deleted.sqlite still gets created), but the problem persists.

Ed

Thunderbird 45.3.0
Lightening 4.7 (9/20/2016)
Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa [Ubuntu 14.04]
Cinnamon 2.8.8

(In reply to blubbber from comment #69)
> i have (had) the same problem with Thunderbird 45.3 and Exchange on Windows
> 7 PC .
>
> There where only 2 files in the mentioned folder \calendar-data\ . One was
> "delted.sqlite" and one local.sqlite.
>
> As i have no clue, how to turn on logging i tried delting both files. This
> worked for me. After that only "local.sqlite" reappeared until i dismissed
> the old calendar reminder, then "delted.sqlite" appeared too.
>
> I noticed this problem always appears after a password change on Exchange
> and mail login, if you didn't dismiss the invite before the password change
> (company policy... every 3 month^^ ).

I have the same problem on macOS 10.12 and Exchange-Server. I have removed all files containing header of invitation.

~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/XXXXXX.default//exchange-data/<UUID>.offlineCache.sqlite
~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/XXXXXX.default//global-messages-db.sqlite
~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/XXXXXX.default//ImapMail/127.0.0.1/Drafts-1
~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/XXXXXX.default//ImapMail/127.0.0.1/INBOX
~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/XXXXXX.default//ImapMail/127.0.0.1/Sent-1

macOS 10.12
Thunderbird 45.4.0
Exchange EWS Provider 3.8.0
Lightning 4.7.4
DavMail 4.7.2-2427

Same here. Too bad it is still not fixed as it is really annoying. I deleted the duplicate event and the alarm in the Sqlite cache DB and now it works. But I agree that this should be properly fixed.

I've just been able to solve the issues I had of:
- not being able to dismiss/snooze the alarms of my appointments
- Lightning not synchronizing with the calDAV server (Radicale) I use to cloudlessly sync my
  calendars between my notebook PC and Android smartphone.

In the faulty setup I had Thunderbird and Lightning were both installed from the repositories.
I've solved the issues as follows:

0 - In Thunderbird, open the Properties of each of your calendars and write down their locations
    (just in case you need them later ...)
1 - Close Thunderbird
2 - Uninstall Lightning package (xul-ext-lightning), using the package management tool or
    the CLI typing "apt-get uninstall xul-ext-lightning"
3 - Re-start Thunderbird, now running without Lightning calendar extension
4 - Install Lightning as an extension from inside Thunderbird:
    go to Tools->Add-ons->Extensions, search for "lightning" and then install it.
    If prompted, re-start Thunderbird
5 - Check that your calendar(s) are correctly set and if need be edit/add them using your notes
    as taken at previous point "0"

Now everything seems to run flawlessly.

I can just be grateful to all people writing on this post, especially Ed, as I alone would not been able to understand that "finger points to Thunderbird/Lightning" as clearlly stated three comments up from here.
Hope this might be of help to someone out there desperately struggling to solve all this, like I've being doing during the whole last week while my calendars were unreliable and unusable.

Lenovo Thinkpad T510
 Linux Mint 18 Sarah 64bit [Ubuntu 16.04]
 Mate 1.14.1
 Thunderbird 45.5.1
 Lightning 45.5.1, then Lightning extension 4.7.4
 Radicale 1.1.1

Samsung Galaxy SIII (GT-I9300)
 Android 4.3
 DAVdroid 1.3.4.1-ose (installed with F-Droid app from f-droid.org repository)

Buongiorno, seccolor -

Interesting solution.... and I'm willing to give it a try, though I DID install Lightning as a "direct" Thunderbird add-on (not via apt-get or the software manager), so "xul-ext-lightning" isn't on my system.

I've been carrying the TBird install along over several OS upgrades, so it's probably time I started afresh. Unfortunately, I've made a lot of about:config changes and have been very poor about keeping notes!

If I survive, I'll post the results....

Thunderbird 45.5.1
Lightening 4.7.4 (10/18/2016)
Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa [Ubuntu 14.04]
Cinnamon 2.8.8

Radicale 0.8

I have the same problem, using Lighting and Provider for GC to connect to my personal Google Calendar.
I cannot dismiss a missed event that was shared with me by someone else.

Linux Ubuntu 16.10
Thunderbird 45.7.0
Lightening 4.7.4
Provider for Google Calendar 3.1

I, too, am having this problem with a brand new install, on a new Windows 10 PC. Thunderbird 45.8.0 with built-in Lightning.

However, in checking in Lightning options, there was one called "Show reminders for past events" (or words like that). It was checked by default. So, I unchecked it.

No more reminders for past reoccurring event. :D

(In reply to Walt Amante from comment #80)
> I, too, am having this problem with a brand new install, on a new Windows 10
> PC. Thunderbird 45.8.0 with built-in Lightning.
>
> However, in checking in Lightning options, there was one called "Show
> reminders for past events" (or words like that). It was checked by
> default. So, I unchecked it.
>
> No more reminders for past reoccurring event. :D

Yes... it's actually "Show missed reminders". That's been mentioned before (see the very first post in this thread and also comment #27.

The problem is (obvious when you think about it), that a reminder time may be passed without TB/L being active and, thus, the reminder won't be shown at all. For example, a reminder is set for 8:00AM on Sunday, 4/9/2017, but TB/L isn't running at that time. If TB/L is stated afterwards, and 'Show missed reminders' ISN'T checked, then the reminder for the event won't be shown. (I just tested this, by the way - created an event with a reminder, shut down TB, waited until the time past, restarted TB: no reminder.)

You're correct that it IS a workaround, but not a real solution. And, since this thread dates back at least five years (and the thread referenced at the top goes back to 2008), I wonder if it'll ever be fixed!

This may be fixed when I finish tests for the patch for bug 1344068. I've been running with this for a while and it works like a charm.

(In reply to Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] from comment #82)
> This may be fixed when I finish tests for the patch for bug 1344068. I've
> been running with this for a while and it works like a charm.

We'll look forward to that! Thank you.

I am experiencing this issue also, when syncing with a Horde calendar. I had the issue in TB 45.8 and also now in TB 52 with the Lightning 5.4b4 version add-in. Past reminders pop up, which is fine, but the dismiss and dismiss all do not work and result in the "the item has been changed on the server. Submitting your changes will overwrite the changes made on the server." Selecting either option to this prompt never dismisses the alarm, and the next time TB is opened, the reminders pop up again. Happy to provide more info or test. No one else is shared or invited on my events. My events were imported from an outlook .ics file (and all fields seemed to have imported correctly)directly into Horde. And then a calendar was set up in TB, and the events synced. The events with reminders in Horde are synced correctly and have the correct reminder times set in them. TB reminder date/times are correct; the reminders just can't be dismissed and keep recurring.

For me too. Its not so much the "old" reminder popping up, but rather that the "dismiss" and "dismiss all" do not work. You can close the reminder pop up window.

c/can/can't/

I'm having this problem on a Mac OS X 10.9 system. I just installed Thunderbird for the first time. I have a dozen "reminders" up to a month old that I cannot dismiss. I can, however, close the window.

I'm having the (basically) same problem with Ubuntu 16.04.

When it starts doing it (after a few days without), it won't let me even close the reminder window.

My solution is to unsubscribe to the calendar (through Office360) and resubscribe.

I'm using:

Lightning 4.7.8
ExQuilla 45.0.116
Exchange EWS Provider 3.9.0

(well, 'workaround')

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for your input so far. Have we come closer to a resolution?

Thanks :)

I'm going to dupe this bug against the one with the patch, I hope we can review and land it soon.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1344068 ***

I just added my Nextcloud calendar to Thunderbird using CalDAV and got 20+ birthday reminders of the last month I can not dismiss. So I also would like to see a resolution soon. At the moment I deactivated reminders of this birthday calender because they are annoying me. Closing the window is working but the reminders come back every 15 minutes or so.

Any update on this? I'm running into this also now when using CalDAV to access Google Calendar

Thunderbord 52.9.1 (64-bit)
Lightning 5.4

see #145901 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1454901

Still got this issue in Ubuntu with ThunderBird 78.13.0 with NextCloud 22.1.1

(In reply to gandalf from comment #95)
> Still got this issue in Ubuntu with ThunderBird 78.13.0 with NextCloud 22.1.1

gandalf, please file a new bug report referencing this one if you have a similar issue. This bug report has been resolved 4 years ago.

I have the current issue on TB 91, so created bug #1736842

I have this issue on TB 91.3.2, I am using CalDev to access the google calendar.