125501 - Mail sorting with threading gets broken when moving messages

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 181446

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Mark Renouf]

Search for "mail thread sort" revealed some several related issues but no dupes.
Since bug 20385 hasn't been implemented, I don't think that's the cause either.

Ok. First, another bug/RFE might already exist for this, but this all started
because I wanted to drag some messages *by thread* into another folder.

What I was trying to do was split split up a folder with about 15,000 msgs
spanning a year, into two folders: Jan-Jun, and Jul-Dec... 

(you need to expand every thread for them all to get moved. The reason for
moving by thread is so that threads get kept intact)

What happens instead is the only the first message of each thread got moved.
After I realized that, I tried to move those messages back into the original
folder, but then they no longer thread correctly. I have a ton of "Re: .."
threads and then the first messages of those threads down at the bottom. In
trying to correct this I tried several things, and although all the messages
sort correctly in unthreaded mode.. when I thread, the sorting is all wrong.  

Some of the messages I dragged in always (in thread mode) sort to the bottom
regardless of the date. 

It got to the point now that the original folder I was archiving is really
screwed up, since new mail (moved into via filters) (again in thread mode only)
is going to the end, but some recent threads ar at the top and some at the bottom.

Example: (threaded display -- date ascending)
1/8/2002
...
2/12/2002
2/13/2002 <-- thread from yesterday
1/1/2002
...
1/15/2002
1/28/2002
1/31/2002
2/13/2002
<-- new mail going here

If I reverse the sort order (click on thread button) it's exactly the same, just
the reverse. I think some of this sorting is based on physical order in the mail
folder and not the date.

I should mention this is an IMAP server. All the clocks are accurate. This only
started happening when I dragged some messages out of the folder and back in.

Comment 1

[Mark Renouf]

Attachment: Screenshot of thread sorting problem

My apologies if that didn't make any sense, it's early yet for me ;)

Just to help clarify and give an easy test case:

(Assume sort order is date ascending (oldest first))

1. Create new a folder. 
2. Move (or copy) some threads into it, but leave a few older messages behind
(must be a complete thread).
3. View the new folder, threaded. Should be correct.
4. Copy the older thread into the folder.
5. View the new folder, the old thread now appears at the bottom, the date is
ignored.

Expected: the older thread should appear in the correct sorted order.
Attached is a screenshot.

Comment 2

[David Burns]

I'm also seeing this problem with RC3 (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0;
en-US; rv:1.0rc3) Gecko/20020523)

The problem description given previously by Mark Renouf is good and is exactly
the behaviour I'm seeing.

Comment 3

[Mark Renouf]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who noticed this. I'm also still seeing this
for every release since I reported it. 

I'd also like to see support for dragging all messages within a collapsed thread
at once. Currently only the first message is moved. Hopefully this might get
some attention in post-1.0 releases.

Comment 4

[Ian Burrell]

It definitely acts like it is sorting threads based on the mailbox order. I
moved some old messages to a folder. Not only do the old messages show up above

I would expect it to sort based on the date. Either the earliest date in the
thread or the latest date in thread. The second would be more useful because it
would put threads with more recent, unread messages on top. The other
possibility would be to allow sorting on one of the other fields while
maintaining the threading. The hard part is determining which messages as
representative for the entire thread.

I reported moving only the first message in selected thread as bug 152702.

Comment 5

[u69748]

I think this is a Dup of Bug 72493

Comment 6

[Mark Renouf]

I disagree.

This problem is about a bug in the default presentation of threaded mail, which
is to thread... then sort by date. As pointed out above, the messages seem to
somehow show up in physical mail folder order. New mail delivered directly to
the folder seems fine, but moving entire threads or parts of threads into the
folder, out of place, will add them out of place and they will never sort properly.

PS: Can someone please *confirm* this bug? 

Comment 7

[Jason M. Abels]

WFM on 2003060704 Win2k. My guess is this is part of the larger thread issues
that were all fixed in April. Can someone confirms that this still happenes? I
cannot.

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Even tho this bug is much older than the dupee, the dupee has a nice attached 
test case that shows the problem clearly.  Also, the description there is much 
more to the point.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 181446 ***