no birthdays in calendar

[chrizilla]

• I added Birthday Calendar 1.2.1 to Thunderbird 115.9
• I added a test contact in my Personal Address Book
• I set the birthday field

Result: In the calendar tab, a new calendar is added "Birthdays in Personal Address Book", but the birthday I just added doesn't show up in the calendar as a calendar event.

What am I doing wrong or do you have any idea what could have gone wrong ?

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

The calendar is only updated occasionally. As you created your contact after installing the add-on, it will take a while for the birthday to appear on its own. To avoid the wait, you can click on the refresh icon (bottom left of your screenshot, besides "New Calendar...").

If that does not cause the birthday to appear, please post the exact test contact you used so I can try to reproduce the behavior you're seeing.

[chrizilla]

Thank you. Sorry, I completely overlooked the "refresh icon". When I click on it, there is no visual reaction (no animation, spin), but I guess this is expected. However it doesn't have an effect for me ... the birthday doesn't appear on the calendar.

If that does not cause the birthday to appear, please post the exact test contact you used so I can try to reproduce the behavior you're seeing.

TB doesn't have a vCard export function, so I cannot export my test contact. But I just created a fresh contact in my empty "Personal Address Book" with no data other than: first name: firstname last name: lastname birthday: 2000-April-4

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

I assume you tested in a clean profile, only executing the steps you listed; sadly I cannot reproduce your issue (on Linux x64). Once I click the refresh icon after executing the steps from your initial post I get a new event ("firstname lastname (24)" on 2024-04-04). The only thing that is visually different is that view mode of the calendar: for me, Thunderbird starts in week view.

There is a bit of ambiguity in your steps (for example when exactly you save the contact and how you navigate to each step), but there is nothing that feels obviously suspicious to me. Can you double-check that you indeed performed the exact steps, starting from a clean profile? If that is correct, can you then open the error console (ctrl+shift+j) and ideally also the add-on console for the birthday calendar add-on (debugging addons feature in the addons tab) and post their content directly after reproducing the issue?

[chrizilla]

Thanks for looking into this. I am not on Linux but Win10, but don't think that matters. The only other reason I could think of: I was testing on Betterbird 115.9.0-bb26 (64-bit) which is essentially Thunderbird 115.9 + bugfixes. So if anything it should be "better" not the culprit ... or do you think this might be relevant ??

The problem is, I am currently very badly equipped hardware-wise. I only have 1 (old) device. On it, I have thousands of important, unfortunately unbackuped emails in a Thunderbird profile. And in parallel, I have a portable version of Betterbird where I test all addons first and only if they work and don't misbehave, I add them to my TB profile. So I can only really test in Betterbird at the moment. Everything else would be really complicated for me.

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

Even if it should not be the culpit, you should clearly indicate what you're testing with in the first place. No idea what Betterbird changes in detail, so it is possible that the changes affect the add-on somehow – given that we ruled out most other things and you seem to be the only person affected so far, I'd even argue it is likely that Betterbird plays a role in this.

You can test things in a separate profile without affecting your existing data - that should not be complicated and is necessary either way. That said, I'd urge you to set up backups now - if you don't have backups, you will pay the price at some point. It doesn't have to be fancy; if you mostly care for the Thunderbird stuff just copy your profile on anything you can get your hands on (Separate Harddrive? USB key? Smartphone? Burn a CD/DVD? Everything is better than what you currently have!).

[chrizilla]

Thank you so much for your backup admonishment. I know and you can be sure I really feel guilty. It's just that I am currently overwhelmed. I hope I can do that as soon as possible. But thank you!

For the Betterbird/Thunderbird mixup: Sorry, my apologies, it didn't occur to me in the beginning. To me it really was just Thunderbird with included bugfixes.

I now have Thunderbird 125.0b4 , I will test with that, if that's ok with you ?

[chrizilla]

Just tried, it doesn't work in TB125.0b4 either.

There is a bit of ambiguity in your steps (for example when exactly you save the contact and how you navigate to each step),

I don't understand what you see as ambiguous, but I'll try to be more verbose now. These are my steps:

1) downlaod birthdaycalendar 1.2.1 from https://addons.thunderbird.net/En-uS/thunderbird/addon/birthday-calendar/ 2) bump max-version to 125.* 3) start Thunderbird 2) create new profile 3) add birthdaycalendar to addons 4) go to address book 5) add new contact in Personal Address Book (PAB) with displayname: "firstname lastname" and birthday: 7. april 2024 6) save contact 7) go to calendar 8) see nothing 9) click on "birthdays in PAB" 10) click on update icon 11) still see no birthday on 7 april 204 12) it occured to me, that maybe it doesn't work because the date is set in the future 13) changed birthday from 7 april 2024 to 7 april 2023 14) go to calendar 15) go to "birthdays in PAB" 16) click on update icon 17) still see no birthday on 7 april 2024

[rsjtdrjgfuzkfg]

I don't support beta versions, so I'm a bit surprised to see TB125.0b4 actually works for me. That said, the "works for me" part takes it away: I still cannot reproduce the issue you're seeing, the event correctly shows up after step 12. For the record, I also tried Betterbird in the version you originally listed, that also works for me.

There is either something you do differently, or the issue is the operating system. I'd expect to at least get some bug reports if Windows were generally broken, though. As it stands, I don't know how to further pursue this issue other than hoping for console messages, but I assume you already checked them:

[...] can you then open the error console (ctrl+shift+j) and ideally also the add-on console for the birthday calendar add-on (debugging addons feature in the addons tab) and post their content directly after reproducing the issue?

(If anybody can reproduce the issue, please chime in with your setup!)