1294991 - Archiving should not remove Gmail labels without warning

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Helder]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:48.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/48.0
Build ID: 20160811141523

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to a folder in Thunderbird which corresponds to some Gmail label
2. Select a message and press 'a' to archive it
3. Open All Mail folder in Gmail using your browser and locate the message from step 1


Actual results:

All the labels in that message are gone.


Expected results:

The message should be in All Mail, but its labels should not be removed. This makes it difficult to organize archived mail.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

Labels are mapped to folders, thus they can't be retained without that message also showing up in the respective folder(s) they were previously assigned to. That's a limitation of Gmail's implementation.

Comment 2

[Helder]

A message which is on my Gmail inbox, to which I added labels A and B appears on Thunderbird under folders "Inbox", "A", "B" and "[Gmail]/All Mail", so I can't imagine why TB (45.2.0) would not be able to archive it the same way Gmail does: archiving simply removes the "Inbox" label on Gmail (while keeping the message in the other 3 places), and if TB can show the message in 4 places it should be able to keep them on just 3 of them too.

At a minimum, Thunderbird should inform users of the any "destructive" actions it will make (e.g. being explicit about "archiving implies removing all labels"), in cases of incompatibilities, so that users can make an informed decision between organizing their e-mails (using gmail labels) or using Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Matt should we consider this to be a bug? (if it exists)

Comment 4

[Matt]

No, This is not a bug IMO.

Archive Explicitly means that the message "should" disappear from the active account folders. That Google feels that it must stay, not withstanding.

When I archive a folder on my desk, I do not keep a copy in my active basket, nor in my trash can or the safe. I am done with that. Baring some reason for it to be retrieved from archival storage, perhaps to keep the tax man happy. If I am still working on the item, then implicitly it should not be archived as it is still active.

Having said that. Perhaps archive should replace labels with Thunderbird "archive" labels. ie we archive by year and originating folder for instance. So a label of that nature probably should be added in the archive to make the "all mail" archive actually resemble a hierarchical archive as far as Thunderbird users are concerned. (Archive/ 2022/Inbox) for example. Thus honouring the Thunderbird settings. Perhaps to be considered in the context of Bug 532159

But the contention that archive should leave mail in the active folder, I do not accept as an archival action, or a Bug.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Matt from comment #4)

No, This is not a bug IMO.

Archive Explicitly means that the message "should" disappear from the active account folders. That Google feels that it must stay, not withstanding.

Like bug 1759335.

When I archive a folder on my desk, I do not keep a copy in my active basket, nor in my trash can or the safe. I am done with that. Baring some reason for it to be retrieved from archival storage, perhaps to keep the tax man happy. If I am still working on the item, then implicitly it should not be archived as it is still active.

Having said that. Perhaps archive should replace labels with Thunderbird "archive" labels. ie we archive by year and originating folder for instance. So a label of that nature probably should be added in the archive to make the "all mail" archive actually resemble a hierarchical archive as far as Thunderbird users are concerned. (Archive/ 2022/Inbox) for example. Thus honouring the Thunderbird settings. Perhaps to be considered in the context of Bug 1759335

But the contention that archive should leave mail in the active folder, I do not accept as an archival action, or a Bug.

Perhaps then this and Bug 532159 should be closed invalid, with the same rationale of bug 1759335

Comment 6

[Matt]

I think we could close this. As for Bug 532159. Ludo knew more about IMAP than I will ever know. But I agree it is not something we should embark on trying to fix. We should just disable the incompatible parts of Thunderbird's UI and settings for Google accounts as suggested in Bug 532159

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Matt from comment #6)

I think we could close this. As for Bug 532159. Ludo knew more about IMAP than I will ever know. But I agree it is not something we should embark on trying to fix. We should just disable the incompatible parts of Thunderbird's UI and settings for Google accounts as suggested in Bug 532159

Do you agree?

Comment 8

[gene smith]

I don't use archive feature much so maybe I'm missing something, but, AFAICT, what the reporter in comment 0 wants actually now occurs.
I received a new email into my TB gmail inbox. Then I copied it to two other gmail folders on TB, "gds" and "eds". I look on the gmail site Inbox and see it has two labels, "gds" and "eds". I then archive the message with TB in "gds" and, at gmail, the label "gds" is gone. I then archive the message at Inbox, and it is removed from (tb and gmail) Inbox but I still see the message in "eds". I then archive the message in "eds" and it is removed at gmail from "eds".
So it doesn't appear that archiving a message that resides in several folders (so has several labels) "removes all the labels" for the messages. All I see TB doing, imap wise, is moving the message to All Mail each time the archive operation is performed at the different folders containing the "same" message. So gmail just removes the folder's label after move to All Mail is successful. TB itself doesn't have a way to explicitly set or remove gmail "labels".

Re-reading comment 0 and 2, I think the reporter is wanting the labels to remain on the message in All Mail after the message has been "archived" in all its containing folders. That's not something TB has control over.

One thing I don't understand is that at gmail site if you archive a message, the message remains in the folder but the folder's label is removed from the message at gmail site, unless the folder is Inbox. However, the message remains in place when accessing that folder in TB. And at gmail All Mail, you still see the labels for messages you have archived at gmail. I'm not sure why this is and don't see how this is helpful

Comment 9

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Closing per comment 8