Closed Bug 1900295 Opened 1 year ago Closed 1 year ago

Copy an email to a folder moves the email within Zoho imap account

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Folder and Message Lists
Version:
Thunderbird 115
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: dave, Unassigned, NeedInfo)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:126.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/126.0

Steps to reproduce:

Right click and email and select "Copy to" and navigate to and select a folder.

Actual results:

The email is deleted from its original folder and is moved to the selected folder. That is, the email is moved, not copied.

Expected results:

The email should have remained in the original folder and a new copy put in the selected folder.

The same happens when using Message Filters. The Move action and the Copy action both move the email. That makes it impossible to copy an email to more than one folder.

What is the usual process for bug reports? Do they usually sit without a response for a long time?
If this is not going to be repaired I need to move to another email client, but if there is a workaround or a fix that will be available soon I may hang on.

The usual process is that the bug needs to get the attention of a TB team member. There are also volunteers who look at bugs.

Right click and email and select "Copy to" and navigate to and select a folder.

I tried that and the e-mail got copied as expected, not moved.

Your report is missing a lot of information to be actionable:

  1. The source folder is IMAP or POP/local folder. If IMAP, synchronised for offline use?
  2. The target folder is IMAP or POP/local folder. If IMAP, synchronised for offline use?
  3. Are you moving between IMAP accounts?

Let's start with that. No developer will look at incomplete reports since they don' t have the time to gather all the information.

(In reply to Francesco from comment #2)

The usual process is that the bug needs to get the attention of a TB team member. There are also volunteers who look at bugs.

Right click and email and select "Copy to" and navigate to and select a folder.

I tried that and the e-mail got copied as expected, not moved.

Your report is missing a lot of information to be actionable:

  1. The source folder is IMAP or POP/local folder. If IMAP, synchronised for offline use?
  2. The target folder is IMAP or POP/local folder. If IMAP, synchronised for offline use?
  3. Are you moving between IMAP accounts?

Let's start with that. No developer will look at incomplete reports since they don' t have the time to gather all the information.

Thanks for your reply. The answers to your questions are:

  1. IMAP, Synchronized
  2. IMAP, Synchronized
  3. No

I have searched for Thunderbird documentation on this but find nothing. You say your version does a Copy not a Move, so there must be a way to get this to work properly. This is mainly a problem with the Message filtering where I want to Copy emails to more than one folder. Is there documentation I can refer to?

Well, before I tried between POP/local folder, now I tried IMAP. It copies, it doesn't move. If it always moved, hundreds of users would be unhappy. More questions:
Which add-ons do you use? Can you start in "save mode" (Help > Troubleshoot Mode).
What is the IMAP provider? You run the IMAP servers yourself? dclark.net? Let's debug the basic manual move first before looking at filters.

Gut reaction - I seriously doubt that what you are seeing is a bug in Thunderbird.

As Francesco indicates, the first test, but not definitive, is to do this in Help > Troubleshoot Mode.

(In reply to Francesco from comment #4)

Well, before I tried between POP/local folder, now I tried IMAP. It copies, it doesn't move. If it always moved, hundreds of users would be unhappy. More questions:
Which add-ons do you use? Send Later. File Link Provider for Dropbox. All are disabled. Makes no difference.
Can you start in "save mode" (Help > Troubleshoot Mode). Yes. Tried it. Makes no difference.
What is the IMAP provider? Zoho
You run the IMAP servers yourself? dclark.net? No
Let's debug the basic manual move first before looking at filters. OK

I tested this on a non-Zoho IMAP server and find that Copy works properly. This indicates that the problem is with the Zoho IMAP server, not Thunderbird.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 1 year ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID

Hmm, TB has users on Zoho, and they haven't complained. Gene, can you try this?

Flags: needinfo?(gds)

(In reply to Francesco from comment #8)

Hmm, TB has users on Zoho, and they haven't complained. Gene, can you try this?

I don't have a Zoho account. I had a trial account a while back for testing another bug but it has expired.
Also, sure this must be a Zoho problem (imap COPY behaving like MOVE) that they should be able to address like they did here: bug 1673158 comment 17.
Maybe they will respond to my "Request Information/NI".

Edit/Addition: I tested on my primary IMAP account and when I copy a message to another folder it uses the UID COPY command. No imap MOVE command occurs.

Flags: needinfo?(gds) → needinfo?(support)

After some discussion with Zoho support I find that "Copy to" works properly if the destination is a Local folder. If the destination is a folder on the IMAP server it works like "Move to".

I then did the same test on an account on a Gmail IMAP server. There I find that "Copy to" works as expected when the destination is a local folder. If the destination is a folder on the IMAP server the "Copy to" seems to work properly, since the email is seem in both the original folder and the destination folder. This is misleading since the "copy" in the destination folder is not a copy, if you delete the "copy" it is deleted from both folders. That is a very bad result!

My conclusion is that "Copy to" should not be used with destination folders on the IMAP server, only Local folders. It's an issue that no error messages or advisory messages appear when using "Copy to" with an IMAP server folder as the destination.

From recorded IMAP:4 log in zohomail trial account I just set up:

imappro.zoho.com:S-INBOX:SendData: 27 uid copy 1 "toHere"
imappro.zoho.com:S-INBOX:CreateNewLineFromSocket: * OK [COPYUID 1 1 3] Success
imappro.zoho.com:S-INBOX:CreateNewLineFromSocket: * 1 EXPUNGE   <-- major bug. Why does zoho expunge after copy?
imappro.zoho.com:S-INBOX:CreateNewLineFromSocket: 27 OK Success

This is major zoho bug in that they are "expunging" (permanently deleting) the message after a copy. All I did was copy a message (UID 1) from zoho Inbox to another zoho folder (on same imap account) I created: "toHere". You see the same "expunge", which is correct, if you do a "move to":

imappro.zoho.com:S-toHere:SendData: 74 uid move 2 "INBOX"
imappro.zoho.com:S-toHere:CreateNewLineFromSocket: * OK [COPYUID 1 2 4] Success
imappro.zoho.com:S-toHere:CreateNewLineFromSocket: * 1 EXPUNGE   <-- Correct!
imappro.zoho.com:S-toHere:CreateNewLineFromSocket: 74 OK Success

After some discussion with Zoho support I find that "Copy to" works properly if the destination is a Local folder.

If a messages is moved from an imap folder to a "Local" folder, either under "Local Folders" or a folder in a POP3 account, or even a folder in another imap account, all TB does is either read the messages from offline store or, if offline store is not in use, reads the message from the server, then writes the message to the destination folder. There is no imap MOVE or COPY command involved, and, since we are doing a "copy to", the source message in the imap folder is not deleted/expunged by TB. So this action doesn't depend on Zoho's MOVE or COPY behavior.

If the destination is a folder on the IMAP server it works like "Move to".

Yes, that's a bug and RFC violation. Zoho treats imap COPY and MOVE as MOVE. Maybe they have a good reason?

Re: Gmail discussion from comment 10:

This is misleading since the "copy" in the destination folder is not a copy, if you delete the "copy" it is deleted from both folders. That is a very bad result!

Yes, I copied the same gmail message to a couple different gmail folders in the same gmail account and then deleted it from one of them. They all went away which seems like a major TB bug. Not sure if this is a regression, a known bug or what...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zoho/comments/184io22/zoho_imap_no_longer_allows_copy/

Apparently, it's intentional and not an accident. But definitely a violation of imap RFC 3501: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.7

Workaround for copy message(s) from a source Zoho imap folder to a destination Zoho imap folder on same account.
Copy message(s) to a Local Folder
Copy (or move) the messages from the same Local Folder to desired destination folder on Zoho imap account.

Re: Gmail discussion from comment 10:

This is misleading since the "copy" in the destination folder is not a copy, if you delete the "copy" it is deleted from both folders. That is a very bad result!

Please file a new bug report about this. I'm not sure if this is TB doing the deletes or gmail. Couldn't find any other bug reports about this but I definitely saw it when I tried it.
Thanks!

Summary: Copy an email to a folder moves the email → Copy an email to a folder moves the email within Zoho imap account
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