1853584 - File -> Compact Folders acts only on current folder. Should compact all folders of an account.

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Mark Sapiro]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/117.0

Steps to reproduce:

Click File -> Compact Folders

Actual results:

With Thunderbird 115.2.2 (64-bit) and an IMAP account it appears that only the currently open folder is requested to be compacted.

Expected results:

All folders in the account should be compacted.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I don't see that.

Comment 2

[Mark Sapiro]

Perhaps I am confused. In older versions, when I selected File -> Compact Folders, the status line messages cycled through messages like

<account name> Compacting folder <folder name>

for all folders in the account. Now when I select File -> Compact Folders it just shows an unchanging

<account name> Compacting folder

as it does when I right-click a folder and select Compact.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I saw the cycling when I tried it just now.

Comment 4

[Mark Sapiro]

I do not see that with Thunderbird 115.2.2 (64-bit) or with Thunderbird 115.2.2 (64-bit) on Mac OS 11.7.10.

I did see it previously with Thunderbird 102.15.1 (64-bit) and older versions.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Maybe it's related to subfolders (bug 1850687)

Comment 7

[Mark Sapiro]

I am now also seeing this issue with Thunderbird 115.3.1 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 20.04

Comment 10

[gene smith]

This is mostly a duplicate of what I reported back at bug 1827973.
What I see is if you are selected on a folder and do file | compact folders it compacts only the selected folder. I think the reporter is expecting it to compact all the folders within the account of the selected folder, not just the selected folder.
If you are selected on the top level account name, file | compact folders compacts all the folder of that account. It doesn't touch other accounts which I suppose is correct.

Bug 1827973 points out issues with "compacting" maildir folders so not exactly a duplicate of this.

Comment 11

[Mark Sapiro]

I think the reporter is expecting it to compact all the folders within the account of the selected folder, not just the selected folder.

Yes, that is what I expect and the way it worked previously in older versions like 102.15.1

Comment 12

[Mark Sapiro]

As I find out more about this, I think the current 115 behavior might be by design and might be OK. What I see now is I can right click a folder in the accounts and folders panel and select compact from the context menu and the folder is compacted, and I can right click an account in the accounts and folders panel and select compact from the context menu and all the folders in the account are compacted. Similar behavior occurs if I select a folder or account in the accounts and folders panel and then select compact from the file menu. In other words, right clicking an item and selecting compact produces the same result as selecting the item and then selecting compact from the file menu.

The difference in prior versions is selecting a folder and then selecting compact from the file menu used to compact all folders in the account and now only compacts the selected folder. While this is different from prior behavior, I can't say it's wrong, especially since I now realize I can compact all the folders in the account by right-clicking the account and selecting compact from the context menu.

Comment 13

[Virgo Pärna]

It cannot be intended behavior, because menu selection is "Compact Folders". As in plural. There is no Compact on File menu.

Comment 14

[Mark Sapiro]

(In reply to Virgo Pärna from comment #13)

It cannot be intended behavior, because menu selection is "Compact Folders". As in plural. There is no Compact on File menu.

Good point.

Comment 15

[Arnaud Ladrière]

I agree with the last comments : this menu option compacts all folders only if the account name is selected on the left pane, and if any other folder is selected, the menu option only compacts the current folder although it's still named "compact folderS".

For the sake of clarity and UX, this should be modified. A simple fix would be to gray out the option (as there is a per-folder compact button on top) when a normal folder is selected.

The better fix would be to have an switch or popup asking if one wants to also compact subfolders when acting on a normal folder.

Comment 16

[Mark Sapiro]

Perhaps a simpler fix is to just change the text in the File dropdown from Compact Folders to Compact selected Folder(s)

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This bug was not caused by bug 1890448. But perhaps the compact rewrite will bring more scrutiny.