123021 - Thread (group) by sender or other than just subject

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 256688

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Neilly]

We can view mail by thread which essentially to
me means "thread by subject". I can sort by 
sender but it would a nice feature if I could
"thread by sender". In other words, instead of
just sorting by sender and listing all email
I would get the folder/arrow that I get with
folders or mail threads but all mail from a
given sender would be threaded. 

It would be really nice to extend it to thread
by any available field.... sender, date....

I realize I can type the sender in the quick
search box (which is a great feature by the
way) but this new feature would let me see
all my email in a compact way...

Comment 1

[Ian Pottinger]

*** Bug 140787 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Luzi]

Could anyone tell me where this enhancement could possibly be made in the source
code?

It really is a feature I want. 

Comment 3

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

I cannot see how this could reasonable be done. Threading means looking at
message-ids and relating messages this way. How should this work with sender?
Those messages are most of the time not related. You can of course set filters
to sort messages into folders.

pi

Comment 4

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

Marking new, but please answer my last concerns how to do it.

pi

Comment 5

[Ian Pottinger]

The word "thread" is causing a misunderstanding.  I think [e-mail] had
the right idea when he added "(group)" to the summary.  

Currently, threaded messages are visually "grouped" together in a tree-like
format. It is my impression that the reporter wants the ability to group
messages by sender using the same tree format. His request concerns message
grouping, not message threading.

Outlook offers this feature under View->Current View->By Sender.  On top of this
request, I'd like to see messages grouped by sender also threaded:

 V ==SENDER1 GROUP open =====================  
 +-> Sender1, topic1 message w/ closed thread
 +-V Sender1, topic2 message w/ open thread
 | +-- Sender1, re: topic2 message
 | +-- Sender1, re: topic2 message
 +-- Sender1, re: topic3 message w/ no thread
 > ==SENDER2 GROUP closed ===================  
 V ==SENDER3 GROUP open ===================== 
 +-- Sender4, topic1 message w/ no thread

Comment 6

[Michael Neilly]

Yes, Ian is correct. His comments reflect what I'm after. I would like the
ability to group messages in a tree format by sender, date etc as opposed to
just by subject.

Comment 7

[edward]

This is indeed a nice feature we are also looking for.  I have created a
seperate bug for this which I am deleting as duplicate.

Regards,

Comment 8

[edward]

*** Bug 202243 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 212933 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[edward]

This feature is best explained at one of the Thunderbird forums..posted here for
reference

The cool features I've seen in Outlook 11 I'^m using in the office is that mails
are grouped as you said. Outlook dynamically groups mails that came in today,
yesterday, ... last week, ... last month and older. You can close such virtual
groups (like a folder in explorer).

What I also like are virtual folders. These are like views. Similar to the Opera
M2 mail client. You have a virtual folder called "unread mail". If you get
unread mail, it is shown in there. It does not matter if you have a filter that
moves mails to folder X,Y and Z. If they are unread, you will see them together
in one folder.

This could be extended to user defined virtual folders. Folders that have a
custom filter applied. You could make a folder, define a filter and defin in
which real folders Thunderbird should look for these mails and pull them out to
display them.

I also like the user filter in Opera. Click on a user and you will see all mails
from this person. Also useful if you seek mails of a specific person in your
address book.

I know such a filter exists somehow. You can dropdown the view mode to unread.
But that's a global setting. I'd like to have virtual folders. They should not
be attached to an account. Like one has Local Folders a Virtual Folders section
would be cool. There you could define per folder settings that stay persistent
along user sessions. There you can make folders and attach filters to them
somehow and tell the filter in which folders it should look for your search
cireteria. This feature could really boost your performance.

Comment 11

[George G. Bolgar]

I'm not sure if this is the same issue, but it is closely related, and relates
to the same feature, even if it manifests differently.

From what I see, threading is being done using the subject.  Some mail readers
have this as an option, but strictly speaking, I understand threading to mean
linking a tree structure using the 'In-Reply-To:' field.  This is clearly not
being done, because I have messages that have nothing to do with each other
being put into the same thread simply because they happen to have the same (one
or two word) subject line.

Simply using the 'In-Reply-To:' header field alone would not cause me this
confusion.

Comment 12

[David :Bienvenu]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 256688 ***