Can Anyone Recommend A Mail Addon To Replace Postal?

Guides UI and Macro
1

Postal WAS the best in-game Mail Addon for this game (in my opnion) and I’ve used it for years.

But the last time it was updated was over a year ago (for game version 8.0.1) and currently runs like crap with game version 8.2.5.

It’s an “RNG” Addon at this point (whether or not the drop down menu(s) actually function properly is strictly a random thing) and I’ve pretty much had it with Postal at this point and so…

Does ANYONE know of ANY work-around in order to get Postal to function properly?

OR

Does Anyone know of ANY other in-game Mail Addon that compiles all of your Guild Members into an Address Book, as well as the names of all of your game characters on all the Realms which you play regardless of Faction (that’s a big help when you send account bound items to your other toons ESPECIALLY when they have special characters in their names)?

There are a number of in-game Mail Addons posted on Twitch, but none of them can hold a candle up to Postal (at least when it works) and was hoping that someone would know of some other Addon that’s comparable to Postal.

Thank you in advance if you respond to this post.

2

Postal hasn’t been updated because there’s been no need to update it. I haven’t had any issues with it in recent patches.

1 Like
3

Not so sure about that.

I’ve seen some posts on the Twitch Boards where other folks have mentioned the fact that they’re getting error messages from the Addon as well.

As far as the “RNG” thing is concerned… Postal was working just fine for me earlier today (drop-down menus and all), but tonight it crapped out on me again… absolutely no drop-down menus to be seen whatsoever. None of my alts were listed, none of my Guild Members were listed. A big fat NADA.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

That was today, but I always like to double check my work (triple check or more if I have to), in order to make sure that I’ve eliminated any problem(s) that might be running interference with any game Addons that I’m using (I even shut down my firewall and anti-virus program to see if THAT could be causing me any problems with WoW… a far stretch for sure, but at least I could eliminate it from my “list” once it didn’t pan out.

So I’m left with the game and other Addons that I’m using (other Addons might POSSIBLY be the problem… you never know), and so the process of elimination was quick and thorough. I simply uninstalled WoW Classic, Wow Retail, and deleted my entire World of Warcraft Games Folder from my Program Files (x86) Folder.

No Addons, No Game, No Game Folder, no residual data whatsoever… and then I did a “clean” install of WoW.

Once the game was installed I logged into my main for a few seconds (just so as to create an Interface and an Addon Folder for the game… which is needed in order to install any Addons into the game from Twitch) and installed a total of three Addons.

BugSack, BugGrabber, and last but not least Postal.

Comes the moment of truth.

I log into the game, step over to a mailbox, click on the Black Book Tab and: Fatality! Fatality! Fatality!

(For anyone familiar with BugSack/BugGrabber they know what sound I’m talking about, but honestly I have the sound turned off at this point because it gets too darned irritating).

There’s more. This is what BugSack/BugGrabber tells me (not that I understand what any of it means):

2x FrameXML\FriendsFrame.lua:2294: attempt to index local ‘accountInfo’ (a number value)

FrameXML\FriendsFrame.lua:2294: in function `CanCooperateWithGameAccount’

Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:370: in function `SortAndCountNumFriends’

Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:457: in function `initFunction’

FrameXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:76: in function `UIDropDownMenu_Initialize’

FrameXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:1060: in function <FrameXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:925>

[C]: ?

[C]: in function `ToggleDropDownMenu’

Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:41: in function <Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:36>

Locals:

accountInfo = 8

*(temporary) = nil

*(temporary) = nil

*(temporary) = "attempt to index local ‘accountInfo’ (a number value)"

playerFactionGroup = "Horde"

1x FrameXML\FriendsFrame.lua:2294: attempt to index local ‘accountInfo’ (a number value)

FrameXML\FriendsFrame.lua:2294: in function `CanCooperateWithGameAccount’

Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:370: in function `SortAndCountNumFriends’

Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:457: in function `initFunction’

FrameXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:76: in function `UIDropDownMenu_Initialize’

FrameXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:1060: in function <FrameXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:925>

[C]: ?

[C]: ?

[C]: in function `ToggleDropDownMenu’

Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:41: in function <Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:36>

Locals:

accountInfo = 8

*(temporary) = nil

*(temporary) = nil

*(temporary) = "attempt to index local ‘accountInfo’ (a number value)"

playerFactionGroup = "Alliance"

Got error messages on my Horde Characters, got error messages on my Alliance Characters.

From what I can tell it’s a “BlackBook” issue in the Addon, and if I disable the BlackBook (and re-enable it) I get more error messages and the BlackBook Button disappears from the menu completely.

I ran this little experiment five times just to be sure that it wasn’t a one time thing. Why the Addon is working for you and isn’t working for me is something that I don’t have an answer for. It might be working for a LOT of people for all I know, and I still don’t have an answer for.

But if Postal, BugGrabber and BugSack are the ONLY Addons that I’m running on a clean install of the game, and I keep getting the same error messages each an every time I run my little “experiment”, then that tells me that there’s definitely a problem with the Addon.

What’s REALLY frustrating is the fact that I have Notepad++ and can read/edit any Lua or Lib Files that I want, but I’m not a developer and have no idea what the error messages are telling me. If I did know, I’d fix the damned Addon myself.

4

looks like blizzard may have changed the api around

the blackbox module has CanCooperateWithGameAccount(toonID) but toonID is a simple number, whereas that function now appears to want a table - accountInfo

they’ll probably need to end up doing something like local accountInfo = C_BattleNet.GetFriendAccountInfo(index) but index could be i or toonID, or even something else that they’ll need to get first (i dont use the bnetfreind functions so dont know for sure)

if you dont know Lua or the wow api then it would probably take a while to sort it out yourself. i would presume people have reported it tot he author and it should get looked at eventually.

worse case, if you dont care about battlenet friends then you could just go around that chunk of code by changing line 366 from
if BNGetNumFriends then -- For pre 3.3.5 backwards compat
to
if false then -- For pre 3.3.5 backwards compat - BNGetNumFriends

5

Interesting I run the Black Book module but haven’t noticed any issues with it. I also have Ace installed separately which may help alleviate some of it though.

I’d report whatever errors you’re getting to the repo.

6

You know… I can be like Billy Bob Thorton in the Amazon Series “Goliath”; once I’m on to something I just can’t let it go.

My friends have told me that I sometimes “over think” a problem; in Psychiatry/Psychology it’s more commonly referred to as “analysis paralysis”.

I’m not going to argue with anyone about it; I can certainly be that way for sure, but sometimes it can be a GOOD thing (all depends on how you look at it I suppose).

I’ve been having a problem with the Postal Addon working properly for almost two weeks and had tried just about EVERYTHING (or so I thought) that I could do in order to get it to work.

Ran my little experiment at least 5 times; messed around with other Addons; I just couldn’t figure it out (not at first anyway).

When Elvenbane said this:

I knew that there HAD to be a flaw SOMEWHERE in my process of “ruling things out”… and that flaw hit me this morning (thank you GOD for analysis paralysis!).

The SOURCE!

I ran my experiment (and attempted to run this Addon) installing it from the from the same source each and every time i.e. the Twitch Desktop App.

So this morning I uninstalled Postal, deleted the Lua/Lua back-up files associated with the Addon, went over to the Curse Forge site, downloaded the ZIP file for Postal, and installed the Postal Addon into my retail/Addons folder manually… and what do you know?

Postal Addon is working for me again without any issues whatsoever (at least so far anyway).

But I learned a few things along the way.

First, even with the Curse Forge “version” of the Addon, if I disable and then re-enable the “BlackBook” in the Addon, it bugs out and I lose drop-down list functionally of the Addon permanently… well sort of.

I’m a staunch advocate of “back-up redundancy” and had already made several back-ups of my Postal Lua’s before I ran that little test. When Postal bugged out, I logged out of the game, deleted both Postal Lua’s from my Variables folder, and replaced them with the “clean” copies of the Lua’s that I had previously saved. Logged back into WoW and Postal was functioning properly again.

So folks (anyone else that might be reading this) DON’T mess with the BlackBook setting in Postal unless you make back-up copies of your Postal Lua’s before you do.

Other thing I discovered is the fact that the Twitch Desktop App can malfunction (I’ve read the comments of other users of the App and they’ve said the same thing).

Fact is, last week when I used the Twitch App to update my Addons, it placed Classic Addons in my Retail Folder and Retail Addons in my Classic Folder which might have been a problem… but I make back-ups of my Interface/WTF Folders all the time too, and so I just deleted and replaced the corrupted folders with my back-ups. Game was up and running again in about two minutes.

The thing that makes me really curious though, is why Postal wouldn’t work for me (right from the get-go) when I installed it using the Twitch Desktop App (all I got were errors, and no functionally… didn’t even give me a Guild drop down list) and yet it works without any problem when I installed the Addon “manually” from the Zip file that I downloaded from Curse Forge.

Something’s hinky about all that. Maybe it’s just better to install Addons manually??

Thing is I have ACE3 installed in my Addons Folder as well, but it didn’t save my bacon with Postal.

Anyway, I’m now a happy camper. Postal works for me again and I can’t go wrong with that (though the Addon could certainly use an update insofar as the BlackBook is concerned).

In any event:

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, and if you’re an Atheist… may the force of Madalyn Murray O’Hair be with you!

1 Like
7

the issue seems to be inside the battlenet friends processing loop so if you dont have any battlenet friends then you wont run into the issue

8

Worth noting that (AFAIK) the external libs won’t load for that addon if you have them baked in - they will prefer the libs in the addon specific folder.

A good bet is to install the -noLib version of the addon if you expect there is an Ace3 issue, and load Ace3 separately.

Another possible fix is to load the standard version of the addon, then manually replace the libs from the Ace3 standalone download.

9

Appears the most recent release may have fixed these issues:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r411 | the_original_manbot | 2020-01-04 15:39:23 +0000 (Sat, 04 Jan 2020) | 1 line
Changed paths:
   M /trunk/Modules/BlackBook.lua
   M /trunk/Postal.lua
   M /trunk/Postal.toc

bug fixes, rewrote section that deals with friends due to api changes
------------------------------------------------------------------------
10

As of 19 Oct 2020 Postal isn’t working. The most common error reported (which saved me from reposting) is:

Message: Interface\AddOns\Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:360: attempt to call global ‘GetNumFriends’ (a nil value)
Time: Mon Oct 19 01:36:26 2020
Count: 1
Stack: Interface\AddOns\Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:360: attempt to call global ‘GetNumFriends’ (a nil value)
[string “=[C]”]: in function GetNumFriends' [string "@Interface\AddOns\Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua"]:360: in function SortAndCountNumFriends’
[string “@Interface\AddOns\Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua”]:437: in function initFunction' [string "@Interface\SharedXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua"]:78: in function UIDropDownMenu_Initialize’
[string “@Interface\SharedXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua”]:1055: in function <Interface\SharedXML\UIDropDownMenu.lua:920>
[string “=[C]”]: in function `ToggleDropDownMenu’
[string “@Interface\AddOns\Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua”]:41: in function <Interface\AddOns\Postal\Modules\BlackBook.lua:36>

Locals:

So, until the author updates again, it isn’t working for sending mail to other characters/guildmates.

11

Did you try the fixes posted in the curse comments section?

12

Yep. Same error every log in, no matter which logs i clear.

13

I’m not sure which logs you are referring to, but Postal is working if you apply the edits referenced in the comments on the CurseForge page. If you’re not comfortable doing the edits, ‘Daxxlia’ left a comment there with a link to a working version.

postal/modules/blackbook.lua

line 360 from:
local numFriends = GetNumFriends()
to
local numFriends = C_FriendList.GetNumFriends()

line 362 from:
sorttable[i] = GetFriendInfo(i)
to
sorttable[i] = C_FriendList.GetFriendInfo(i)