1187310 - Folder email count and star

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1185417

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Anje]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
Build ID: 20150630154324

Steps to reproduce:

Windows Vista
TB version 38.1.0

View > Folders > All

I assume:
blue font on folder means new unread mail and I've not accessed folder.
black bold means I have accessed folder, but still have unread mail.
(XX) where X means a number of unread in that folder.
(*XX) means accumulated count of unread mail in top level AND subfolders OR only in subfolders.

basicaly:
the count in () brackets tells me how many.
the star tells me it is an accumulated number, so to look in more places than the top level folder.
no star tells me it is the top level folder.

Create a folder call it 'Techo'
create a sub folder call it 'SubTecho
put one unread mail in each folder.
Top level collapsed folder now says (*2) - this is correct.





Actual results:

View > Folders > All
If I then expand the Techo folder andread the SubTecho mail, then there are only unread mail in the top level folder - not it's subfolders.
Collapse the folder - the star remained visible. 
Surely this is not correct.








Expected results:

Having collapsed the folder and knowing there are no unread mail in any subfolder, I would not expect to see the star - just the number in brackets representing the one unread mail in the top level folder. 
So this would inform me BEFORE I had expanded the folder that I did not need to expand the folder as the unread mail was in the top level folder. 

This is a really useful feature but not working as expected.

In addition:
Create a folder call it 'Techo'
create a sub folder call it 'SubTecho
put one unread mail in each folder.
Top level collapsed folder now says (*2) - this is correct.

If I select 'View' > 'folders' > 'Unified'
The same Techo folder does not apply a star regardless of how many unread emails are in 'Subtecho'.
It also does not have the correct count, it only displays the (1) - it only displays the number of unread in the top level folder - does not count subfolder unread.
This is incorrect.

If I expand the Techo folder:
Correct count numbers display against all subfolders.

Comment 1

[:aceman]

(In reply to Anje from comment #0)
> I assume:
> blue font on folder means new unread mail and I've not accessed folder.
> black bold means I have accessed folder, but still have unread mail.
> (XX) where X means a number of unread in that folder.
> (*XX) means accumulated count of unread mail in top level AND subfolders OR
> only in subfolders.

The star just means that the number was collected from the folder and all its subfolders. It does not say anything which folders actually contributed/increased that number, i.e. whether the unread messages are in the parent folder or in the subfolders.

> Expected results:
> 
> Having collapsed the folder and knowing there are no unread mail in any
> subfolder, I would not expect to see the star - just the number in brackets
> representing the one unread mail in the top level folder. 
> So this would inform me BEFORE I had expanded the folder that I did not need
> to expand the folder as the unread mail was in the top level folder. 

This is a good suggestion and is already filed in bug 1185417.

> If I select 'View' > 'folders' > 'Unified'
> The same Techo folder does not apply a star regardless of how many unread
> emails are in 'Subtecho'.
> It also does not have the correct count, it only displays the (1) - it only
> displays the number of unread in the top level folder - does not count
> subfolder unread.
> This is incorrect.

The "star" feature intentionally does not exist on any other folder view than All. You could file the feature request (in a new bug), but in other modes it is much harder to implement.