1466892 - The default in global search results window is threaded - need option to permanently set search results default to unthreaded

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[zaggie1]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0
Build ID: 20180516032328

Steps to reproduce:

⌘+K then in results list select "open email as list"


Actual results:

"open email as list" results automatically defaults in threaded view. Consequence: not always clear where desired email is located, new messages are easily overlooked. Also threading screws up list if you then want to the sort by date – even when threads are expanded the dates are not properly chronological


Expected results:

Ability to change results sort by default to unthreaded view

Comment 1

[Onno Ekker [:nONoNonO UTC+1]]

I think the threaded view is set here:

https://dxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mail/base/content/mailTabs.js#468

Maybe this should look at the state selected in View > Sort By > Threaded/Unthreaded/Group By Sort or maybe a pref is needed to decide how to show the gloda facet view...

Comment 2

[Zygmunt Dreszer]

I also join to this question. I have thunderbird normally configured to show posts as unthreaded. It works everywhere except the global search. When i search for mails, and select "open mails as list" the list is always sorted as threaded, no matter of any settings i was able to find and change. Even if I change this with View / Sort / Unthreaded it is not persistance, and with next search i get threaded results.
This is unacceptable situation, but due to free status of thunderbird i can't demand anything, but have hope developers understand this is very annoying.
There is even no shortcuts for threaded / unthreaded feature built in thunderbird. This i workarounded with ThreadKey addon, but it is only some fast solution, not the one which should be in the core.

Comment 3

[zaggie1]

(In reply to Zygmunt Dreszer from comment #2)

I also join to this question. I have thunderbird normally configured to show posts as unthreaded. It works everywhere except the global search. When i search for mails, and select "open mails as list" the list is always sorted as threaded, no matter of any settings i was able to find and change. Even if I change this with View / Sort / Unthreaded it is not persistance, and with next search i get threaded results.
This is unacceptable situation, but due to free status of thunderbird i can't demand anything, but have hope developers understand this is very annoying.
There is even no shortcuts for threaded / unthreaded feature built in thunderbird. This i workarounded with ThreadKey addon, but it is only some fast solution, not the one which should be in the core.

The quickest workaround I have found to unthread - when in "open email as list" results view press key u (letter "u") this will unthread any threaded messages in the results list

Comment 4

[Onno Ekker [:nONoNonO UTC+1]]

(In reply to zaggie1 from comment #3)

The quickest workaround I have found to unthread - when in "open email as list" results view press key u (letter "u") this will unthread any threaded messages in the results list

As far as I know this only works when you have my extension ThreadKey installed :-D
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/threadkey/

Comment 5

[Dudley Sirius]

I also would like to see the CTRL-K; "Show results as list" either have a default setting in the Config Editor, or follow the mailnews.default sort and view settings.
To be specific, for some users, it is critical to be able to quickly search emails and view them in list form, unthreaded, so that all emails are visible and in time sequence, regardless of thread. Being able to set this behavior as a default would make Thunderbird much more convenient to use, and save me a lot of redundant mouse clicks. I go through these steps (Search, Show Results as List, View>Sort By>Unthreaded) about 20-40 times each day.

Comment 6

[Bernie Lenhoff]

Agree. I hate threaded view and have to change it manually every time I do a search. Please let users choose their default search view!

Comment 7

[Leszek Dubiel]

This is asked from others:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3098965&e=0

https://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3077505

Comment 8

[Anje]

This continues to be a problem in 102.4.2
Support Forum still asks how to switch it off.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1393531

The auto setting of threaded in general has caused much grief especially to those who never used it - separate issue.
But in the search results it has always been a nuisance because it has to be disabled every search.

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

Finding a way to permanently unthread Thunderbird is a truly consuming quest, especially since 102's default thread, it is even more important than even getting ISO 8601-ish dates (solved, YAY!). Hopefully this quest won't take a decade to resolve. It is very easy to find furious users; the hatred for threading as a default view is over 9000. I think maybe if instead of bold, the subject was always flashing text like early 1990s web pages and equally impossible to disable it would upset people more, but maybe not. Or maybe of the only allowed font was comic sans. Not suggesting these as good development milestones, BTW, just to be clear.

I've tried the two known config:prefs options from https://web.archive.org/web/20220621022420/http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_and_news_settings
mailnews.default_news_view_flags=0
mailnews.default_view_flags=0
and even setting both instances of "threadCol":{"ordinal":"0"} in xulstore.json to no avail, search results are still threaded and therefore basically unusable (Recoll to the rescue!)

Threaded views are someone's horrible, horrible idea of clever and while being able to quickly turn off threading is palliative, there's a real usability problem with threaded search results. The use issue arises for me under the vast majority of search cases which go something a little like this:

• Global search for a word, "Prisencolinensinainciusol" say,
• Get a few results, the excerpt of which quite usably and very ably makes it clear which of the results is the one I'm looking for,
• click on the link-ified subject of the most promising result,
• Link opens a threaded page of say 30-300 emails, sorted by Date (in my case) and the oldest message highlighted, /not/ the message found in search (indeed the search term may be only in one message out of the potentially hundreds returned),
• spend the next 10 minutes trying to find the message and, since we're now opening message previews directly instead of by search, having to scan potentially 100s to thousands of lines of text in each of hundreds of messages to find the search term,
• shake fist at computer and growl "ooohhhh, stupid thunderbird!"

Note: yes, CTRL-F and putting the search term in the find-in-message box at the bottom helps expedite scanning of the 100's of messages, but isn't a good solution.

So make the users happy, make me happy, make it easy to globally, permanently, never to be restored, never to be overwritten by an update, absolutely banish threading in all views, in all windows, in all instances. Give users a simple preference under General -> Language and Appearance like:

Scrolling
☑ Use Autoscrolling
☑ Use smooth scrolling
☐ Always show scrollbars

Threading
☐ Thread windows by default (including search, threading can be unset on a folder by folder basis)
☐ List view (unthreaded) by default (including search results, threading can be set on folder by folder basis)
☑ Only show list views and completely remove any option for threading anything at all from the interface forever

Comment 10

[Anje]

(In reply to [e-mail] from comment #9)

I've tried the two known config:prefs options from https://web.archive.org/web/20220621022420/http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_and_news_settings
mailnews.default_news_view_flags=0
mailnews.default_view_flags=0

Those settings will force all new folders to not use threading.

For current folders:

• Select 'Inbox'
• Set 'View' > 'Sort by' to 'Unthreaded'

Now apply to all folders in account.

• right click on column headers to see drop down.

• 'apply current view to' > select 'folder and it's children' > select account name and select account name again.

• repeat for each account.

Comment 11

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Entering a search term in TB

This image shows a typical search term entry yielding the one exact "Gloda-whack" I'm looking for.

Comment 12

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Despite a single message Glodawhack, an entire thread is returned as search results

A single glodawhack result (one message with the search term) being found, the entire thread that search term is found in is returned. This is, while not entirely useless, a much less than optimal response from a search engine.

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: After de-threading and digging, finding the actual desired result

Here's our glodawhack revealed with human-assisted search. Thanks for reducing the total input of all messages to semi-tractable subset, but couldn't you just give me the result I asked for?

Comment 14

[[e-mail]]

Hi Anje,

Yes, this is good advice for people trying to make their mail folders unthreaded - and in mail folders as much as I find threading generally unusable as a default, there are times when threading a folder message is helpful, especially when corresponding with people who habitually omit the text they're responding to and a "thread" has run on past the buffer flush of local memory; human memory, in this case, for example: I forgot what the thread was about and why a response after a few days of "great idea, lets do the first one, but the second idea will set the equipment on fire, so don't do that" is important. Remember, you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor.

However, it does not change the behavior of the search results window at all. The threaded search results are often unusable. Calling it a "bug" suggests someone didn't mean to do it, but clearly someone, somewhere, for some reason, thought threaded search results are a good idea. Humans: digital watches.

They are not. It wouldn't be nearly such a horribly cripplingly, search utility obliteratingy problematic decision if the results window defaulted to selecting, highlighting, and showing the preview of the message the search term actually appeared in, but it does not. There's just a list of the thread with perhaps 100s of messages in it, only ONE of which contains the sought-after still hidden treasure. Sure, it is a smaller manual search space than the entire collection of millions of email messages, but search is successful when it shows you the thing you're looking for, not jamming a data shovel into the data pile, dumping a data shovel-full of data results at your feet and superciliously sniffing "your answer is in that pile, start digging, human."

What search has done is return an entire THREAD that contains at least ONE message that has your search term rather than the actual message that contains the search term. I do not want the whole thread as a result. I don't care about the thread. I want the message I'm looking for. The one that was highlighted in the results, the one I clicked on. Let me see that ONE message. Please sir, please may I have my result?

As an organizational fix, "view->sort by->unthreaded" also works in the results window to dethread the results, and while that makes the list of clods that might contain the sought gem more aesthetically appealing to me and other people that prefer chronology to call and response, the problem of the utility of search results remains: at least ONE and often only one of the message clods from the pile of clods in the thread dump has my precious gem in it and now I have to dig through each clod until I, myself, find the gem. Thanks computer.

Comment 15

[Klaus Kusche]

Another vote for that one: Make search results unthreaded by default.

Threaded search results are currently the most annoying "feature" in TB, making search practically useless.
I don't want the whole thread, I just want the message / messages containing the search hit,
and I want them sorted in the way I like.

Comment 16

[Erwin]

In Supernova (TB 115), Global search no longer shows a threaded view. So this bug can be marked as fixed, but now we've the opposite problem, how can we always set it to show a threaded view, as it is definitely helpful, even if I don't like threads for the main inbox views :/.

Comment 17

[zaggie1]

Problem back in Supernova! Global search results defaults listed results in threaded view - View > Sort by > Threaded.
Please allow option to set default in untreaded view

Comment 18

[Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw]]

(In reply to zaggie1 from comment #17)

Problem back in Supernova! Global search results defaults listed results in threaded view - View > Sort by > Threaded.
Please allow option to set default in untreaded view

Global search's "Show results as list" as well as "Open Message in Conversation" now respects the preference mailnews.default_view_flags, so setting it to 0 will show results unthreaded.

Comment 19

[zaggie1]

(In reply to Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw] from comment #18)

(In reply to zaggie1 from comment #17)

Problem back in Supernova! Global search results defaults listed results in threaded view - View > Sort by > Threaded.
Please allow option to set default in untreaded view

Global search's "Show results as list" as well as "Open Message in Conversation" now respects the preference mailnews.default_view_flags, so setting it to 0 will show results unthreaded.

Thanks! That worked.