1807771 - favorite folders do not sort properly beginning with with 109.0b1

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[David McDivitt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I opened Thunderbird after upgrading to with 109.0b1 (64-bit), then with 109.0b2 (64-bit).

Actual results:

My favorite folders in the folder pane do not sort properly. They sort alphabetically regardless whether a system folder (inbox, sent, archive, trash) and leading spaces are removed when doing the sort compare.

Expected results:

Previous versions would sort system folders (inbox, sent, archive, trash) at the top then honor leading spaces in folder names so those would come next. I would like the application to honor my leading spaces as it used to, so I can have some control over the sort.

Comment 1

[David McDivitt]

I have several mailbox accounts. It lists folders from one account, then the next, etc. previous versions would put all the inboxes first.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

TCW does this reproduce for you?

Comment 3

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

I hope I am reading the "Expected Results" comment correctly. You're saying you expect TB to honor a space in front of a folder to allow the folder to somehow be moved to the top in chronological sorting order?

When I tried to put a space in front of a folder I made on my GMail account, the server complained that "The current command did not succeed. The mail server for account <removed my account name> responded: [CANNOT] Folder contains excess whitespace (Failure)."

I tested also on my IMAP Comcast account putting a space in front of a new folder and calling it _ABC (where _ represent a leading space in front of the folder name) and it did not put it above Inbox, Sent and Trash but simply after the Trash folder name. Same result if I simply created a folder named ABC. It was put below Trash. Leads me to suspect that server-side folders such as Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, etc. have precedence that is being honored either at the server email software level that TB cannot or is no longer able to ignore or circumvent. What was the last version of TB that you say used to allow you to do this? I've never seen this be allowed.

I have several mailbox accounts. It lists folders from one account, then the next, etc. previous versions would put all the inboxes first.

This sounds like you were using Unified Folder view (View > Folders > Unified) which muddies this report somewhat.

To answer the question, I cannot repro any sort of sorting order whether there is a leading space in the folder name or not.

Comment 4

[David McDivitt]

I did the following steps for illustrating the problem:

1. Installed 108.0b3 in a separate folder
2. Edited profiles.ini to have a profile named 108.0b3 using c:\email_ 108.0b3 as the data folder.
3. Restored c:\email from two weeks ago as c:\email_ 108.0b3
4. Invoked version 108.0b3 and chose the profile 108.0b3 to make sure it worked ok, then closed the app
5. Deleted c:\email_ 108.0b3\mail
6. Copy c:\email\mail into c:\email_ 108.0b3\mail
7. Invoked version 108.0b3, chose the profile 108.0b3, and verified it has current mail data
8. Invoked version 109.0b2 (64-bit) which is my current working version and chose the default profile
9. Created a picture of each display

See attached pictures for same data from versions 108.0b3 (64-bit) and 109.0b2 (64-bit).

Comment 5

[David McDivitt]

Attachment: 2023-01-02 13_44_47-Inbox.png

Comment 6

[David McDivitt]

Attachment: 2023-01-02 13_44_26-Inbox.png

Comment 7

[David McDivitt]

To clarify steps used to demonstrate the issue, once a later version of Thunderbird has been opened on a profile a previous version cannot be opened on the profile. The "mail" folder within the profile can however be replaced, probably without issue. So I restored my email data from two weeks ago that used 108.0b3 as an executable, then I replaced the "mail" folder in that data folder with the "mail" folder from my current data folder.

Comment 8

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

(In reply to David McDivitt from comment #7)

To clarify steps used to demonstrate the issue, once a later version of Thunderbird has been opened on a profile a previous version cannot be opened on the profile. The "mail" folder within the profile can however be replaced, probably without issue. So I restored my email data from two weeks ago that used 108.0b3 as an executable, then I replaced the "mail" folder in that data folder with the "mail" folder from my current data folder.

Ok. Whoa. I never even knew about this "Favorite Folders" view option. It's new to me so bear with my ignorance. This makes trying to repro and writing up STR a bit more clear.

So for sure, it seems like STR should include:

1. Set Folder Pane to only display Unread Folders and Favorite Folders in Folder Pane using View > Folders > Unread & Favorite

In 109.0b2, when I have Unread Folders and Favorite Folders only visible in Folder Pane, I cannot create any folders that show up. It's as if no action happens. If I switch back to only using View > Folders > All, the folders I tried to create alphabetically (i.e., a, b, c, d, e, f, etc) while in Unread Folders and Favorite Folders "mode, they do appear. So it seems like something is up but I do not know how to assign "favoritism" to a folder such that it appears as a favorite folder when I switch to Unread Folders and Favorite Folders "mode".

My work GMail account only displays one "favorite" folder when I change views even though I have six other folder created as well. I can't see anything different in properties when I right-click among the other folders.

Comment 9

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

Uh, Google is my friend here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-folder-pane-view

Let me play with this a tad bit and see what I can muck up.

Comment 10

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

Attachment: alpha-sorting-seems-ok.png

I set all my created folders on my GMail account to be Favorite and created some new A > Z folders and set them to Favorite as well. When I switched to View > Folders > Unread & Favorite, they all sorted from A > Z just fine. Nothing was out of alphabetical order.

Comment 11

[David McDivitt]

Click the hamburger in the folders pane and verify "all folders" is checked. That will display all folders in the pane. Right-click a folder in the all-folders section and insure "favorite folder" is checked. That will cause the folder to appear in favorite-folders. Make sure a few folders have "favorite folder" checked. This is very complex and not user friendly, but once accustomed not too bad.

To duplicate this issue you will need a previous version of Thunderbird installed and invoked from its own executable folder. You will need a separate profile pointing to its own data folder. 1) Separate install of Thunderbird with previous version. 2) Separate profile with separate data folder. You cannot simply open the app and play with it trying to reproduce something. Please follow steps given in my previous message where I install version 108.0b3 as the previous version. No need to list all the steps again.

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

The folders in compact view are now sorted according to account order, following bug 1606116.

Comment 13

[David McDivitt]

I would be happy if the folder name is compared for the sort routine, without trimming it or removing spaces. The folders appear somewhat haphazardly in the favorites list, not following a straightforward ascii sort with some out of sequence. For instance the picture I uploaded for version 109.0b2 has the following:
michelle
sylvia
philosophy
recover
save (6)
sent
spam
chase
city_of_springfield

The system folders should be at the top. Those are the ones with system icons. Then user defined folders should follow, but honoring the folder name without trimming it.

Comment 14

[itagagaki]

I deleted the alphabetical sorting in compact view.
The reason is that it would result in a different order than the one specified by the user in the account settings.
I also provided an option to sort as before in the compact view. But it was deemed unnecessary.

The above changes naturally also affect the order of folders. That is the issue.
We may need to rethink the order in the compact view.
But at least we should respect the order of the accounts as arranged by users.

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

How is this with newer beta?

Comment 16

[David McDivitt]

I have version 115.0b3 (64-bit) at present. The sort issue went away with the 115 branch. I like the way it sorts now, as it used to, with system folders first and user folders following, and if I precede the folder with an underline it will place that one first.