160027 - Import from Outlook Express: Lost "Mark as read" information

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Import, defect)

Description

[Eli Handel]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530
BuildID:    2002053012

When I imported mail folders from Outlook Express, all the e-mail got the little
green diamond indicating "unread", even though I had marked most of them as
"read" in Outlook Express.

Comment 1

[Chad Schieken]

This is also true of imports from Eudora 5.1.1, all emails appear "bold" and
unread. 

Comment 2

[Daniel Wang]

*** Bug 189117 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 204890 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

taking - the import code doesn't know if messages are read or not, but I might
be able to figure it out.

Comment 5

[Ian Billings]

Even if you 'read again' messages imported from Outlook Express, they may (=
probably will) later appear as 'unread' because the read flag has been reset. 
If you generally filter messages and look at folders with 'unread' messages in,
this can waste a lot of time!

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

I poked around but it's hard to figure out the flags from the outlook express
data file format, and make that correspond to the mozilla OE import code.

Comment 7

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

*** Bug 279149 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Rob Siklos [:robzilla]]

not that messages which are "flagged" in OE also lose that status when they are
imported.

Comment 9

[Emmanuel Stapf]

Would be nice to fix this, because the `mark as read' feature is not recursive, people importing large amount of mails from outlook or others, would spend a lot of time to make sure that all their imported folders do not contain unread message.

I suggest:
- always mark messages read on import (possibly an option in the import wizard)
- have a `mark as read' feature which applies to the current folder and subfolder too.

Comment 10

[David Sterry]

Found this resource that describes the outlook express file format. http://oedbx.aroh.de/ is the general resource with specific information on the read flag(bit 8 of offset 0x01 of the message object) at http://oedbx.aroh.de/doc/OE_Dbx_MessageInfo.html.

Comment 11

[Phil Lacy]

confirmed
flags as well as read, unread flags are not imported.  I know where to get them from OE but will research the import code and try to fix.

Comment 12

[Phil Lacy]

Attachment: adds several tags to imported msgs

adds read tag and others. Need to determine if star, watched, marked etc transfer to proper place.

Comment 14

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 359416 [details] [diff] [review]
adds several tags to imported msgs

this patch has bit-rotted - since it's taken me so long to review this, I'll de-bitrot it and attach a new patch today. One question - I've got OE 6, not OE 5; will I see any effect from this patch?

Comment 15

[David :Bienvenu]

I do hit a breakpoint in the oe5file code, so I guess the answer is yes.

Unfortunately, import seems to be broken, with or w/o this patch. It claims to successfully import my 8 messages, but the inbox is empty...I wonder if some of the db changes have broken this - I'll debug a little.

Comment 16

[Phil Lacy]

comment 15
I think my message imports always makes a new folder. Not at my machine now, but see if a new folder isn't there called something like oeexpress folders with it's own inbox folder.

Comment 17

[Phil Lacy]

comment 15. OE 5.0 is OE 6.0 (for our purposes). there's an OE 4.0 that has a different registry location but that should be coded in original import code.

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: un-bittrotted patch

this is what I'll checkin - thx for the patch, Phil!

Comment 19

[David :Bienvenu]

fix checked in, thx, Phil.