1399380 - gmail All Mail syncs even though it is set in account settings to not sync

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[udippel]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/60.0.3112.113 Chrome/60.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I upgraded frpm kubuntu 14.04 to 16.04.
 


Actual results:

Since then, I cannot avoid a synchronization of 'All Mail', of my Gmail folder, to my (small) hard disk.
Before, this problem did not occur. 

Under synchronization, the Gmail / all mail box is *not* ticked. 
I have tried to delete the 'All mail' folder, but was informed that was not possible. 

I have deleted all the 200000+ mails in that folder, successfully, and regained disk space. 
After the next restart, it recreated and re-downloaded all 200000+ mails, again.


Expected results:

Thunderbird should have followed my instructions of *not* synchronize to 'All Mails' for offline use. Obviously, the version that I am running does not consider the settings (contrary to the one I used with kubuntu 14.04).

Since I use my Gmail Inbox from a number of machines, the 'workaround' of using POP3 is not working for me. 
Instead, I need Thunderbird to respect the un-setting of synchronization for 'All Mail' in 'Item for Offlione Use'.

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Which exact version are you using? You need to use at least TB 52.2.1:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/52.2.1/releasenotes/

Comment 2

[udippel]

Attachment: Unsetting in accounts

Comment 3

[udippel]

Attachment: Unsetting in properties

Comment 4

[udippel]

thunderbird 1:52.2.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1

I have also added two screenshots showing the unsetting of the sync.

What now?

Comment 5

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Ask Gene?

Comment 6

[gene smith]

Under my gmail account "Sync and Storage" I uncheck "Keep messages for this account on this computer" and under Advanced I checked the folders I still want to be kept locally, leaving [Gmail]/All Mail unchecked. Then I shut down thunderbird and went to ~/.thunderbird/<my profile>/imapMail/imap.gmail.com and deleted all the *.msf and other files there. Then I restarted tb. Tb then downloaded headers and created the *.msf files for each folder. Then it downloaded the email bodies for the folders that I wanted to have locally. I could see there was only an All Mail.msf (containing headers) and no larger "All Mail" file that contains the email bodies.

However, if I check "Keep messages for this account on this computer" and under Advanced I uncheck the folders I don't want to have the bodies stored locally, after deleting the files and restarting tb, tb goes ahead and gets all the headers and bodies even for folders that were not checked and creates the very large "All Mail" file as you are seeing. And the folders I had uncheck under advanced are checked again! So you must uncheck the top level "Keep messages..." and then under Advanced choose which folder's full emails you want kept locally.

I didn't expect it to work like this. I expected the Advanced setting to always override the top level setting (not sure if this is a bug). Anyhow, reporter, does this resolve your issue?

Tested with tb version 52.3.0 (64-bit) on Fedora 25.

Comment 7

[gene smith]

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization
This implies that to cause the email bodies to *not* be stored locally you have to uncheck the "Keep messages for this account on this computer" and then use Advanced... button to select which folders you do want stored locally. This agrees with what I see. I'm not sure why the Advanced... button is even enabled when "Keep messages..." is checked since then disabling download of email bodies for a particular folder in that dialog has no effect, at least for folders other than Trash, Deleted, Spam and Junk. (Looking at some old bug reports, at one time Advanced... button was disabled when "Keep messages..." was checked.) There should at least be some indication that the folder selections in this state are essentially read-only (selections greyed?), but there isn't.

Comment 8

[udippel]

Good. Lots of comments:

0. This behaviour is inconsistent with the previous versions, so an update (like in my case) results in - at least - unexpected behaviour.

1. I have done these settings as recommended. Logically, after a change of settings, a flag should be set to review the consequences of that change. That is, in this case it should empty out the undesired synchronized folder (I don't think it will, but let's see). Quite logical: one adds a folder: its contents will be downloaded. One deletes a folder: its contents will be removed.  

2. I had thought of deselecting the "Keep messages for this account on this computer", but that was just too counter-intuitive, because that's what I actually *want*.

3. Since I didn't do 2., I never saw the logical disarray of a button to be still active ("Advanced"), because 37 years in the trade have made me unsuspecting a feature completely disabled would not disable its further specifications.

4. The actual effect compounds to the misery of 3., since one has to disable an effect, in order to select its specifics. 

5. And, worse, if you enable an effect, its "Advanced" settings do no longer allow to actually do *any* settings.

I really wonder, who writes such stuff (probably a greenhorn), and - worse - who signs off such a misery into production. 

I might sound 'harsh', and yes, I am. After some twenty years in the FOSS 'business', trying hard to evangelize FOSS, and solely using *nix, I encounter too many efforts to re-write functional stuff, over and over. And make people like myself running into unforeseen trouble; filing some bugs a multitude of times, over and over, within some 6 or 10 years. 
Because I am convinced, we would be much further in front of the game, had we not tried to re-invent the wheel over and over (I followed KDE from 1 to 5, Gnome from 1 to I dunno). We might have achieved a level clearly superior to Microsoft. Alas, we once too often threw out the proverbial 'winning team'. 
The Thunderbird I had on kubuntu 14.04 wasn't actually different (to me) compared to the one I have now. Except, it would work without fiddling.

gene: Thanks so very much for your quick and competent help!! Thumbs up!

Uwe

Comment 9

[gene smith]

Do you know the tb version in kub 14.04? I'm curious if something changed.

Comment 10

[udippel]

No, sorry, I don't know.
I never actually bothered, I had updated the 14.04 from some 12.04 or something. So I don't remember any settings done by me of earlier.
Though, it didn't eat up on my disk space - that's how I noticed this time. I had some 8 G of free space (df -h) all the while, on /home, while some hours after the update it popped up a warning of running out of space. And I had no idea why, since an update usually doesn't eat into /home. I deleted some larger files, however, freeing another 3 G which were filled, again, and the warning popping up again. So I couldn't have had the 'all mails' earlier.
I came to source the Gmail folder, since it also reflected incoming new mail numbers in parenthesis in Inbox as well as in 'All Mail' (as you can see on one of the screenshots). That hadn't happened earlier. Then I went to the settings to rid my hard drive of the senseless 200000+ of all Gmails ever received. And then I ran into what I described above. 
So I don't know if the settings were looking just as silly before, but simply didn't work to this behalf?

Uwe

Comment 11

[gene smith]

I checked in a ubuntu archive and found that 14.04 (trusty) started with tb 24.4.0 and by this month (9-2017) had advanced to 52.2.1. Also, looked through all the top level tb release notes in that range and saw no mention of changes regarding folder sync. 

I'm wondering, when you upgraded to the new kubuntu did you re-use your old tb profile or start over from scratch? If you reused the old profile (typically in ~/.thunderbird/) it shouldn't have changed your account and folder sync set-up. But if you started from scratch, and you kept "Keep messages for this account on this computer" checked (which is default) then that might explain why the behavior changed and you starting getting the big "All Mail" file, even though you de-selected it in the Advanced setting (which to me seems like a significant bug).

Doing searches in bugzilla, it appears that all changes in the "sync" functionality were done like 8 years ago.

Comment 12

[udippel]

Gene, no, it doesn't work. I have disabled the sync now, as described. And - for reasons of control - deleted the last few days in there. Restart the machine, and - yup - everything is being updated, again. Including the most recent and new mails which are shown in bold and with their number in parenthesis. 

With respect to your assumption on no changes during the last 8 years, I would refer to the release notes further up, stating that Gmail wasn't synchronized properly before. So the non-sync on kubuntu 14.04 could well have been a result of the non-functional Gmail sync. Though this can only be a guess on my side. 

I have added a screenshot of the settings. You can see the 3 new mails, read in Inbox but not yet synced.

You might want to suggest I create a new profile. It is well possible that that will work. But it is a non-solution. Any reasonable software will have to re-read its configuration and behave accordingly. If it doesn't, something must be flawy in its logic and sequence. 
Maybe I'm the only one, but I doubt it. I upgraded kubuntu from 14.04 to 16.04. Would I be the only one doing that? Others might not notice, and I would not have noticed either, had I not been running out of disk space.

Comment 13

[udippel]

Attachment: Thunderbird_doesnt_follow_rules.png

Settings are not followed

Comment 14

[gene smith]

Unclear what's not working. Are you getting the huge "All Mail" file again? If so, did you delete it before restarting tb ? -gene on phone

Comment 15

[gene smith]

Maybe you are getting All Mail headers only. If you don't want the folder at all you unsubscribe it.

Comment 16

[udippel]

Gene, to #14: It cannot be deleted. So it says. I deleted some mails before the restart, and as I wrote, they are re-synced, again.

Gene, to #15: I don't understand. I think I made clear, and showed a screenshot, that it is unsubscribed? Or what do you mean?

Comment 17

[gene smith]

Maybe can't del in tb. Shut tb and with file mgr or rm  go to ~\.thunderbird\your profile\ImapMail\gmail.com\Gmail and del the big All Mail file
Then start tb.
Rt click on account to unsubscribe folders.

Comment 18

[gene smith]

Your screenshot is for sync. Subscribe is a different dialogue.

Comment 19

[gene smith]

Unsub. May be all you really need if you rm those All Mail* files.

Comment 20

[gene smith]

(In reply to udippel from comment #12)
> 
> With respect to your assumption on no changes during the last 8 years, I
> would refer to the release notes further up, stating that Gmail wasn't
> synchronized properly before. So the non-sync on kubuntu 14.04 could well
> have been a result of the non-functional Gmail sync. Though this can only be
> a guess on my side.

Let me know if I'm looking at the wrong tb release notes, but for 52.2.1 all I see is 
"Fixed: Problems with gmail (folders not showing, repeated download, etc) introduced in 52.2.0"
I assume this a regression from 52.2.0 but I can't find where it was fixed in the "complete list of changes" link.
I have looked at notes for the other releases and I don't see anything about gmail sync problems, but I could just be missing it. (I do see several mentions of OAuth2 gmail issues in the notes.)

I was outside typing (or trying to type) on my phone so I will explain better what I meant above about subscription. An alternate or work-around for your problem is to right click on your gmail account and select subscribe...  Then go to the [Gmail]/All Mail and unsubscribe that folder and maybe even unsubscribe [Gmail] if you have no other folders you want to see there. Then shutdown tb. Go to your profile area and delete the storage files for All Mail: "All Mail" (the big file) and, optionally, "All Mail.msf" (the smaller header file). Then when you start tb it should simply not download new headers or email bodies for All Mail, and, of course, you won't see All Mail folder and, optionally, [Gmail] folder. With "All Mail" unsubscribed, I only see a zero length header file (All Mail.msf) and no All Mail file, when both files were initially deleted and tb started.

Yes, the All Mail folder does not have a "delete" right-click option. I suspect that is because if you did delete it it would then go to Trash. Then when you empty Trash, *all* your gmail would be permanently removed from the gmail server (I think). But removing the All Mail* storage files in your profile won't affect the gmail server.

In your screenshot, it shows "All Mail (3)" which seems normal since you are still subscribed to All Mail. However, only All Mail.msf should now grow in size as new mail comes in (since All Mail not selected for offline use). If you haven't yet deleted "All Mail" file, it shouldn't get any larger, and if you do (or have) deleted it, it shouldn't come back since you have un-checked All Mail in the Advanced dialog.

Still, I think something is not quite right here and still trying to determine what it is.

Comment 21

[udippel]

Gene,

I understand - I think - everything that you wrote, except of the "since you are still subscribed to All Mail". We seem to see different things here. Please check my uploaded last screenshot. I *think* I am *not* subscribed there. Should this be incorrect, I don't mind to be corrected. Since the general button is deselected, and 'All Mail' is deselected, I wonder why I am being synced. 

Thanks again for your precious help, and please get *us* synchronized w.r.t. the item, if am subscribed or not.

Uwe

Comment 22

[gene smith]

Uwe
To unsubscribe you right click on account name in folder pane and select Subscribe... And uncheck All Mail under [Gmail]. That should remove it from the list you show in the attachment too and if you delete those files and restart tb you should be good to go.
Gene

Comment 23

[gene smith]

I'm a bit unclear on what you are expecting and what you mean by "no, it doesn't work" and "...why I am being synced." I thought your original concern was the big file being created due to full email bodies being stored locally for "All Mail". Based on the attached screenshot, you have accomplished that. However, you will still see every old and future email in the All Mail folder listed since headers (but not bodies) are still downloaded and stored, which is the smaller All Mail.msf file. If you don't want to see "All Mail" folder at all then you unsubscribe it. Then you can, if desired, remove the "All Mail" and "All Mail.msf" files so less disk space will be occupied; these files are never automatically deleted by tb. Then, when All Mail is unsubscribed, the setting on the screen you show in the attachment are irrelevant since tb will not list and not download any emails or headers for All Mail; in fact, All Mail won't be present on that screen at all.

Comment 24

[udippel]

Sorry, but we are turning in circles now, so it seems to me. According to my understanding, 'All Mail' as shown in that screenshot *is* unticked, that is unsubscribed. 

If the unsubscribe needs to be done elsewhere, I wouldn't know where, on which pane, I could - as you wrote - "To unsubscribe you right click on account name in folder pane and select Subscribe... And uncheck All Mail under [Gmail]"
Could you eventually add a screenshot showing that location, please?

Comment 25

[udippel]

Dear gene, as I wrote above, and as you can see from the earlier screenshot, the account properties have sync disabled, and the box for All Mail disabled. 
Since we seem to have run in a misunderstanding, please find a screenshot of the folder pane, and you'll see that the folder pane has All Mail disabled. And yet, it updates regularly.

Comment 26

[udippel]

Attachment: Thunderbird_doesnt_follow_rules1.png

Screen shot of folder pane shows that sync is disabled.

Comment 27

[gene smith]

Attachment: Subscribe/Unsubscribe screen

Right click on account, click Subscribe... and uncheck "All Mail" folder to unsubscribe. This should cause TB to ignore the All Mail folder in the future and not download headers or email bodies. However, it won't remove the files containing the header and bodies from you disk. You must do that manually.

What you have done, as indicated in the last screenshots, is you have only disabled future download of email bodies to your disk. Now you will only download the small header (not the larger email body plus attachments) when a new email arrives and you open it. You are still subscribed to "All Mail" so you will see updates as before and only the "All Mail.msf" header file will grow in size.

As I said before, in either case above, 1) unsubscribe from All Mail or 2) disable download of email bodies (or both) you can remove the large "All Mail". In case 1) you can remove All Mail and All Mail.msf (see the next attachment for the file location).

Comment 28

[gene smith]

Attachment: All-file-view.png

This shows the typical location for the large "All Mail" file that you can delete if you have unsubscribed from All Mail folder and/or if you have disabled download of email bodies for All Mail, i.e., unselected it for offline use. If you only unsubscribe All Mail you can also delete the smaller "All Mail.msf" if you want; however, I would recommend not removing it, unless it also takes up too much space on your drive, since it won't have to be re-downloaded if you decide to subscribe All Mail again.

Hopefully this answers your question and I am not completely mis-understanding what you are asking. Also, sorry for a bit of delay in my response today. Had a real mail "crash". Actually someone crashed into and knocked down my mailbox/letterbox along the road/street and had to put it back up today.

Comment 29

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

aceman will remember ~5 years ago we had a bug where the settings were not saved - but that seems not to be the case here. But I seem to recall we've had cases where preferences were not being recognized (compact settings comes to mind).  

cc: some other gmail knowledgeable folks.

Comment 30

[gene smith]

Maybe I don't understand the reporter's definition of sync. Tb is a bit quirky but by my definition sync or not sync works for me. Don't see a gmail specific issue here.

Comment 31

[udippel]

Wow, Gene, thanks!

However, sorry to say, this looks overall even more ridiculous: a *third* subscribe pane, one that I have - I concede - never visited before. 

First: The one accessed through the Account Settings, where I had actually already unsubscribed "keep messages for this account on this computer". 

Second: The 'Properties' under the Mailbox itself, also shown in one of the screenshots, where under 'Folder Properties'->'Synchronization'->'Select this folder for offline use' can be selected. And it actually was deselected already.

Third: The 'File'->'Subscribe' which actually still *was* subscribed, as you rightly pointed out.

Nobody should try to convince me that this agglomeration of almost identical settings, accessible through three very different paths, almost same looks (First and Third) can actually be understood by the average user. :-(
There ought to be a good reason for these features. At this moment, it looks silly to me, sorry to say. What would be the differences between 
 - Keep messages on this computer
 - Select this folder for offline use
 - Unsubscribe [this folder]
please?
And if there was, the controls for these three ought to be accessible from a single location; where these three - obviously different - behaviours can be selected, including a basic explanation.

For a lighter note: When i unsubscribed as advised by you, the earlier Second has now been activated by the system to 'Select this folder for offline use'; seemingly by itself. So it is on now while the mailbox itself is grayed out. Totally senseless, as far as I can see. 

Okay, next I'll manually delete the file as suggested. Again, it ought not to be me doing that. First ought to have this already according to the wording of the text displayed (?keep messages for this account on this computer.). Though it didn't. 

Now we still have no clue, why the previous Thinderbird on kubuntu 14.04 did not ramp up all that memory. But this shouldn't be my concern any longer. It seems that it is rather the Thunderbird team that should look into these questions.

Comment 32

[udippel]

(In reply to gene smith from comment #30)
> Maybe I don't understand the reporter's definition of sync. Tb is a bit
> quirky but by my definition sync or not sync works for me. Don't see a gmail
> specific issue here.

I agree with you. 'Snyc' wasn't my favorite until I discovered the setting. 
However, to my understanding, what I intended, was exactly what I did: deselect "keep messages for this account on this computer". 
If this means that it doesn't keep the messages, but the headers, we users can't know. It isn't written anywhere near there. 
'Quirky' is a nice word for this. Let's leave it that!

Thanks again,

Uwe

Comment 33

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

With comment 31 and comment 32 we're getting somewhere.  No offence, but it's been hard to understand what you are getting at. (TBH I haven't followed and read all the comments) 

So perhaps related are
- Bug 509397 - Merge UI to manage Subscriptions and Advanced Offline Settings
- Bug 524684 - The text for various options in the per-account "Synchronization & Storage" screen are confusing
- Bug 528009 - Message Synchronization: "main" checkbox and folder selection inconsistent
- Bug 537943 - "Advanced" button at Synchronization&Disk Space should be enabled even if mail.server.serverX.offline_download=false is set, and is better to be called "Folder Property Manager".

a) If you were to distill your concerns down to ONE bug, which of the above would it be?
b) If you were to cite one or two items that you think are NOT covered in the above bugs, in one sentence what would it be?

Comment 34

[gene smith]

(In reply to udippel from comment #31)
> Wow, Gene, thanks!
> 
> However, sorry to say, this looks overall even more ridiculous: a *third*
> subscribe pane, one that I have - I concede - never visited before. 

Actually, this is the only subscribe pane. The others aren't.

> 
> First: The one accessed through the Account Settings, where I had actually
> already unsubscribed "keep messages for this account on this computer". 

Technically, the account settings / Keep Messages ... on this computer is not subscribe related.
There are actually two levels for this. The Advanced button allows you to explicitly set which folders in any account that you want to store for offline use (a.k.a., sync) so email bodies are stored locally and don't have to be fetched from the imap server every time you open a random email. For the All Mail folder, this causes the big "All Mail" file to be stored. The changes you make in Advanced will only take effect when you hit OK. Cancel causes the the any changes you make on this screen to be reverted.

However, the top level setting which is the checkbox "Keep Messages on this computer" behaves differently. As soon as you uncheck it *all* of the folders in the current account become marked as "do not keep full messages on this computer". Canceling the "Synchronization and Storage" screen has no effect. Same is true if you set the "Keep Messages on this computer" checkbox. All folders for the current account get set to keep full message bodies on this computer and Cancel has no effect. To change the setting you can go into Advanced and check or un-check individual folders and then dismiss that dialog it with "OK".

For new accounts "Keep Messages on this computer" is always checked on. However, under Advanced not all folders are checked on. Folders such as Junk, Spam, Deleted, Trash and Bulk Mail remain unchecked so only these folder names don't have the their message bodies stored locally when an account is initially set up. Regardless of whether the folder is checked or not checked here, typically they are all still initially subscribed so you can see all the folders and their contents.

> 
> Second: The 'Properties' under the Mailbox itself, also shown in one of the
> screenshots, where under 'Folder Properties'->'Synchronization'->'Select
> this folder for offline use' can be selected. And it actually was deselected
> already.

Actually, this is exactly the same as the Advanced setting under Synchronization & Storge. A change here changes the same folder under Advanced and vice versa. The only difference is that here you can command a download of the email bodies for the folder and you can't under Advanced which shows a tree of folders for the account so you can set them all in one place. Cancel also works here.

> 
> Third: The 'File'->'Subscribe' which actually still *was* subscribed, as you
> rightly pointed out.

Unsubscribe just tells TB to ignore the folder so it is not listed in tb and you see no emails in the unsubscribed folder.
I still may be a bit uncertain of everything unsubscribe actually does. I know it does hide the unsubscribed folder and its contents. However, when I look at the header and stored email files what I see is that when I unsubscribe from, for example, "All Mail" I see the large "All Mail" file containing the bodies be deleted automatically, if it was present. The smaller and always present "All Mail.msf" containing the headers is also deleted and then automatically comes back as a zero length file. If you re-subscribe, a new "All Mail-1.msf" and "All Mail-1" are created with the old All Mail.msf still present. If All Mail is set so bodies are not stored locally, on re-subscribe that flag is changed back to the default of storing bodies locally and a new large "All Mail" is downloaded. So I'm not exactly sure what the -1 files are about. Note: I think if you resubscribe repeatedly the suffix becomes -2, -3 etc.

> 
> Nobody should try to convince me that this agglomeration of almost identical
> settings, accessible through three very different paths, almost same looks
> (First and Third) can actually be understood by the average user. :-(
> There ought to be a good reason for these features. At this moment, it looks
> silly to me, sorry to say. What would be the differences between 
>  - Keep messages on this computer
          Sets *all* folders in account to keep or not keep. Caution! Causes instant change to all folders with no cancel feature! :(
          Advanced button below "Keep messages" checkbox allows fine tuning on individual folders. Cancel works here :)
          Folders and emails still visible (not hidden) regardless of how this is set. This is not subscribe/un-subscribe!
          
>  - Select this folder for offline use
          Same as Advanced above but for single folder. Can also command a bodies download now for the folder, unlike Advanced.

>  - Unsubscribe [this folder]
          Hides folder and its contents. Auto removes the bodies file (All Mail). Zeros the header file (All Mail.msf).

> please?
> And if there was, the controls for these three ought to be accessible from a
> single location; where these three - obviously different - behaviours can be
> selected, including a basic explanation.
> 
> For a lighter note: When i unsubscribed as advised by you, the earlier
> Second has now been activated by the system to 'Select this folder for
> offline use'; seemingly by itself. So it is on now while the mailbox itself
> is grayed out. Totally senseless, as far as I can see. 

You lost me here. What did you do and what is grayed out? I haven't see anything grayed out ever.

> 
> Okay, next I'll manually delete the file as suggested. Again, it ought not
> to be me doing that. First ought to have this already according to the
> wording of the text displayed (?keep messages for this account on this
> computer.). Though it didn't.

You might be able to get by by just unsubscribing All Mail since the big All Mail file, if it exists, is automatically deleted. But if you re-subscribe All Mail the big file will come back until you unsubscribe again or configure tb again so "All Mail" bodies are not stored.

When I suggested you delete files before I was not 100% right. The trick is to always keep the All Mail.msf file. If you delete "All Mail.msf, when tb starts up it will use the default "keep messages locally" setting and download/create the big "All Mail" file again, regardless of how you had that folder set before you shutdown tb.  So only delete the big "All Mail" file to free disk space.

> 
> Now we still have no clue, why the previous Thinderbird on kubuntu 14.04 did
> not ramp up all that memory. But this shouldn't be my concern any longer. It
> seems that it is rather the Thunderbird team that should look into these
> questions.

Do you have a backup of /home from when you had TB on kub 14.04? If so, you might be able to try using the old tb profile or at least look at it to see if the large "All Mail" and "All Mail.msf" were maybe both present. Again, I haven't found any changes that would intentionally change the sync functionality that are less than 8 years old.
I'm still unclear when you were on kub 14.04 if All Mail folder was just not visible (i.e., it was unsubscribed) or if was visible but you didn't notice any disk space issues then, or if you are sure there was no "All Mail" file being stored. If you could answer this it would go a long way in really understanding the problem.

Comment 35

[udippel]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #33)
> With comment 31 and comment 32 we're getting somewhere.  No offence, but
> it's been hard to understand what you are getting at. (TBH I haven't
> followed and read all the comments) 
> 
> So perhaps related are
> - Bug 509397 - Merge UI to manage Subscriptions and Advanced Offline Settings
> - Bug 524684 - The text for various options in the per-account
> "Synchronization & Storage" screen are confusing
> - Bug 528009 - Message Synchronization: "main" checkbox and folder selection
> inconsistent
> - Bug 537943 - "Advanced" button at Synchronization&Disk Space should be
> enabled even if mail.server.serverX.offline_download=false is set, and is
> better to be called "Folder Property Manager".
> 
> a) If you were to distill your concerns down to ONE bug, which of the above
> would it be?
> b) If you were to cite one or two items that you think are NOT covered in
> the above bugs, in one sentence what would it be?

From the wording, I didn't write much different to what bug 528009 has already pointed out. 
The others are also valid, correct, but not that pertinent. So 528009 it is.

Not clearly written in any is the fact, that the unsuspecting user doesn't know anything about the underlying technical features, and he doesn't need to know. Over. So there ought to be a more concise and less protocol-related *single" point of settings, like

 - This is an account that I have (do nothing, just leave it as account)
 - This account should receive updates, though only the header
 - This account should receive header and body of all incoming mail
 - This account should be in synchronization with the server, so when I delete a mail there, it will be deleted here. When i delete a mail here, it will be deleted there
 - This account should see to it that everything is downloaded for an offline use.

Of course, these are draft formulations only. And maybe I missed others. 
Though, settings have to be in a single interface accessed by a single command, per account/mailbox. For example right-click on that mailbox/account.

Comment 36

[gene smith]

I have enter a new bug 1402558. It identifies an issue that could potentially cause the main problem that is reported here. However, I am not saying that bug 1402558 exactly describes the scenario that actually caused the issue for the reporter of this bug 1399380. It may be caused by a completely different reason.

Comment 37

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

udippel, feel free to comment in the bug after testing version 60