2001557 - folders are renamed in TB 146.0b3+ - imap (and ews) folders do not use the same name as used on server.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1993842

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Ramona Gavrilescu]

Attachment: Screenshot 2025-11-21 at 10.36.51.png

Affected version:
146.0b3(20251118190535)
Platform:
Win 11, macOS15.7.1

Steps to reproduce:
1.Launch latest TB beta.
2.Configure a new account using gmail provider.
3.Check imap folders use the same name as used on server.

Actual results:
ALL Mail folder is renamed as Archive and the Trash folder is renamed in Deleted

Expected results:
Imap folders should use the same name as used on server.

Also noticed on TB 146.0b3 for 2 gmail accounts configured in TB there are some inconsistency between Trash folder, for one gmail account the Trash folder is named correctly, for the other one it's rename in Deleted

Notes:
Other folders are renamed also for other providers like Yahoo instead of “Junk “folder now it’s renamed “Spam”, for accounts that supports EWS Deleted Items folder is renamed Trash, “Sent Items” folder is renamed “Sent” ,“Junk Email” folder is renamed “Spam”

Comment 1

[Francesco]

Have you seen bug 1999677?

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Right, bug 1998456 didn't really implement what was requested there.

Comment 4

[Anje]

Attachment: incorrect folder names.jpg

It's not just gmail, it's any Imap account.

Image shows Daily 148.0a1

BT imap account
The server 'Archive' folder was renamed as 'Archives'
The server 'Trash' folder was renamed as 'Deleted'
Fortunately other folders eg: Sent had same name as on server. But if they were named something else as is the case of a gmail account then it would also wrong.

Gmail imap account
The server 'Sent Mail' folder was renamed as 'Sent'
The server 'Bin' folder was renamed as 'Deleted'
The server 'OldStore' folder was renamed as 'Archives'
I personally created the 'OldStore' folder to use as my Archives'.

I do not subscribe to see 'All Mail', but I did test it and it was auto and very misleadingly renamed as 'Archives'. 'All Mail' contains all emails, incoming, outgoing and all emails known as 'Archived' basically emails that have had their labels removed.

This issue is specific to Imap accounts.
No server folder should be renamed to anything. It should always use the same as used by server.
No personally named folders should be auto renamed to anything.

We are starting to get complaints in the Support Forum regarding renaming of folders. The obvious one being the 'All Mail' being incorrectly renamed. But as exaplained this effects more than just 'Archives'.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1554153

Comment 5

[Anje]

It's likely other servers will experience similar issue.
Some server use 'Sent Items', 'Sent Mail', 'Trash', 'Bin', 'Bulk Mail', 'Junk'
If server happens to use names like 'Deleted' or 'Sent' or 'Spam' or 'Archives' then people will not notice any change.

It's useful to have the different names as it's easier to know which account I'm viewing.
example: If my Message List Header says the folder is called 'Sent Mail' - at a glance, I know I'm viewing the gmail account emails which I sent.
Now it a pain as I double check. To me 'Sent' is my BT account not gmail.
Having everything the same is not helpful.

It becomes a difficult issue if user is trying to work out which folder is which when there are more than one eg: Archive or Sent etc folder. There are times when a user has had a 'Sent' and a 'Sent Mail' or a 'Sent items' folder and theya re trying to work out which one is the correct server folder. Incorrectly renaming folders in an imap account causes additional problems.

Comment 6

[Anje]

Support Forum:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1554153
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1553770

Person very confused because 'All Mail' disppeared:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1553790

First case I've seen off full dataloss where someone suddenly discovered a 'Archives' folder which they did not want.
They were very confused.
They deleted everything in it and then wanted to get rid of the 'Archives' folder. It did not exist in the subscribe list. More confusions.
They used a gmail account and did not know the 'Archives' folder was in reality the 'All Mail' folder:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1553950

Comment 7

[Ian Eales]

Duplicate.

Folder SentItems on the server now called Sent in TB. Duplicate folder Sent [created by TB a few versions back] also shown that contains NO MESSAGES.

Folder Junk on the server now called Spam in TB. Context menu change and now two Alt-S items whereas before Alt-J deleted Junk.

Whomever is approving or suggesting these changes should remember that some of have been using Thunderbird since you were in Kindergarten. Every change like this is a potential bomb for typists as a decades long HotKey combination could now be a fatal mishap.

Comment 8

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Hi Anje, thanks for the reports and the links.

All the "All Mail" issues will be solved in the next release as we addressed that problem in bug 1999677.

Regarding the folder names changing, that was a conscious decision and a wanted change to mitigate the problem of inconsistent naming from different servers.

It's useful to have the different names as it's easier to know which account I'm viewing.
example: If my Message List Header says the folder is called 'Sent Mail' - at a glance, I know I'm viewing the gmail account emails which I sent.
Now it a pain as I double check. To me 'Sent' is my BT account not gmail.

Thank you for this example, but unfortunately this scenario is very unique and only applies to users that remember that a specific folder belongs to a specific account. Also this is something that users can't control, so users are "encouraged" to train their muscle memory through word association that is not reliable and changes based on servers settings.

We're writing down an ADR to reflect these changes: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D270059
Also, we have a lot more improvements planned for the folder pane to allow better distinguishing folders with the same name that belong to different accounts.

Let's keep this bug open for now to collect more feedback and evaluate the impact of this change.

Comment 9

[Ian Eales]

"Thank you for this example, but unfortunately this scenario is very unique and only applies to users that remember that a specific folder belongs to a specific account"

Like myself and my wife and my associates and we have have being doing it since email was invented.
Many of us have multiple work, personal, family, etc, etc accounts and the braindead change just makes our lives a little bit more miserable.
Thank-you for making decisions for us. It really helps. NOT!

Comment 10

[Christian Riechers]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #8)

Thank you for this example, but unfortunately this scenario is very unique and only applies to users that remember that a specific folder belongs to a specific account. Also this is something that users can't control, so users are "encouraged" to train their muscle memory through word association that is not reliable and changes based on servers settings.

This is by no means unique. In case of Yahoo, and AOL accounts, the folder for spam is called 'Bulk'. It's been like this forever, and users are used to it. I don't remember anyone ever complaining about it.
Also, Microsoft accounts now show a Spam folder in the folder pane, while the folder is called 'Junk' on the server.

Regarding the folder names changing, that was a conscious decision and a wanted change to mitigate the problem of inconsistent naming from different servers.

This rather feels like a solution looking for a problem. I'm now seeing a Spam folder in the folder pane. When clicking that Spam folder, what I do see in the status bar is 'Opening folder Bulk'.
Also, the Folder Properties for the folder now called 'Spam' show a 'Bulk' folder in the Location field.
How is this consistent?

Comment 11

[Francesco]

(In reply to Christian Riechers from comment #10)

Also, the Folder Properties for the folder now called 'Spam' show a 'Bulk' folder in the Location field.
How is this consistent?

Not to mention the subscribe panel.

Comment 12

[rbarnett]

This looks like an extreme example of this issue...

I have a Thunderbird client where the name of *every" folder and subfolder is now displayed as Drafts .
The user is not happy.

This is for version 140.6 running on Windows 11.
The folders & subfolders are for several mail accounts, some imap, some gmail. All are affected.

On the other hand I have the same client version running on Windows 10 with the same mix of email accounts from the same mail servers and, so far, it is unaffected.

Comment 13

[Oliver WD]

Since today (Version 146.0 Windows11 64bit) all subfolders, which are configured to send emails from (e.g. [e-mail] for folder test) are renamend to the german word "Gesendet" for Sent.

Now thunderbird is almost useless to me, as I cannot switch off this behaviour and I cannot recognize, which folder is the correct folder.

see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1554533 for screenshots

Comment 14

[Anje]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #8)

Hi Anje, thanks for the reports and the links.

All the "All Mail" issues will be solved in the next release as we addressed that problem in bug 1999677.

Regarding the folder names changing, that was a conscious decision and a wanted change to mitigate the problem of inconsistent naming from different servers.

Inconsistant names are not a problem, they are an advantage. They also assist with Support Forum issues when a user has different names for folders on same account and needs to know which is correct. I have helped loads of people fix folders in those situations, so I'm well versed on how important it is to display accurate server folder names.

Also this is something that users can't control, so users are "encouraged" to train their muscle memory through word association that is not reliable and changes based on servers settings.

Users do not need to control it nor do they want to control it. What they do not want is Thunderbird controlling it. But now you are telling people to train word association which maybe unreliable and does not match folders on server. If some people operate on different email clients and access same account, it's also confusing.

I cannot think of any situation where an enforced naming convention has a benefit, when it's unique to a specific email client.

It's undesirable to assume I or anyone would like personally created folders to auto have their names altered.

Comment 15

[Anje]

(In reply to Francesco from comment #11)

(In reply to Christian Riechers from comment #10)

Also, the Folder Properties for the folder now called 'Spam' show a 'Bulk' folder in the Location field.
How is this consistent?

Not to mention the subscribe panel.

I'm so pleased that the Subscribe panel has not changed because that would be a real issue.
You subscribe to see what is on server.
How would anyone know what it is they are really subscribing to see if it does not match the server.
Some people have more than one folder eg: Junk Items, Spam, if both are listed as Spam then which one is the real Spam ?
So you select both and then what do you choose in Junk Settings - which Spam do you choose and how do you know the difference - no one knows which is which.

At the moment, I've got a problem with 'Synchronisation & Storage' because it's not using the server names. All this guess work is a real nuisance.

I created a folder called 'OldStore' to use as an location for archived mail as I did not want to use 'All Mail'.
It has a subfolder called 'OldStore 2023' which I've set up as the current selected location for archiving a load of emails from 2023 - but it no longer displays as 'OldStore 2023', it's just called 'Archives'. I decided to rename it so it just had the number. Not possible and this is a folder I created.
In 'Copies & Folders' unchecking 'Keep message archives in' does not allow any renaming. That folder still has the flag set up.
I was forced to reset 'OldStore' as archive and then I could rename desired folder and reset. But the loss of the year being displayed is nothing short of exasperating.
In 'Subscribe' list at least I know what I've subscribed to see, but 'Synchronisation & Storage' is a pain as it does not offer the real names.

This has nothing to do with muscle memory that's easy to deal with or getting used to incorrect names. It's now become more important than ever to remember all the correct names and work out how to come up with cunning methods of revealing them. Because someone will want to know how to fix it.

Comment 16

[Michael Lease]

I'm having a similar (or the same) issue. I have my own domain, and I use it to make multiple email identities for different purposes. The other day, all of my folders with an associated identity started showing up as "Sent" in the folder list, no matter what the actual name is. Right-clicking on the folder and looking at Properties shows me the location of the folder, with the correct name at the end of the IMAP path. This appears to have started with version 146.0 (which was automatically applied on Dec. 11), as I had no problems with 145.0.

At first, I thought my profile had become corrupted and built a new profile. As I began to rebuild my identities in the new profile, I went into "Copies and Folders" and checked the box to place a copy of messages in the folder corresponding to that identity. When I exited the Manage Identities dialog and looked at my folder list, it showed up as "Sent" again. I tried to edit the display name, but it wouldn't let me change it. Unchecking the box in Manage Identities made it display the correct name of the folder. I can check the box to place replies to emails in the folder they're in, but I can't check the box to place new messages from that identity in the folder without making it show up as "Sent" in the list.

I went back to my original profile, but unchecking the box for placing new messages in the folder did not change the appearance; it still says "Sent" in that profile; it only reverts to the correct name in my new profile.

Comment 18

[Hannes Hauswedell]

https://hauswedell.net/tmp/tb_fail.png

Regarding the folder names changing, that was a conscious decision and a wanted change to mitigate the problem of inconsistent naming from different servers.

Thanks for "mitigating" all my problems. Much improved user experience. 10/10 ⭐

Comment 19

[Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770]]

I just updated to Thunderbird 146 and this change is really, really annoying.

I use multiple identities, one of which is for our helpdesk folder.
This 'helpdesk' identity is configured to use the "Shared Folders/helpdesk" as the Sent folder, to collect everything there (it's a mixed Inbox and Sent folder). Now, with Thunderbird 145 this folder was still correctly labeled as "helpdesk". With Thunderbird 146 it's now labeled as "Sent".

This makes it impossible to distinguish the helpdesk folder from other accounts' sent folders at a glance. I don't understand this change at all, it's frustrating to update Thunderbird and just getting hit by this. I will revert to Thunderbird 145 for the meantime and hope this useless change will be reverted.

Comment 21

[Daniel Calcoen]

what a mess! fantastic idea, really genius ...

anyway, a workaround
install the add-on "FolderFlags"
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/folderflags/?src=search

click on your name screwed folder, rigth-clik, in the pop-up menu, click properties
now in the tab "General Information" you can see the "Name" and in location the server name
in the "Flags" tab remove the tick that has renamed your folder ...

I found several of my folder with more than une ticked (?)

cheers
Daniel

Comment 22

[Francesco]

Note that the causing bug 1993842 was backed out from TB 145 for "unintended side effects", however, the unintended side effects are now back in TB 146. The partial mitigation (only for local folders) from bug 1998456 wasn't backported to TB 146.

Comment 23

[Hannes Hauswedell]

anyway, a workaround: install the add-on "FolderFlags"

Unfortunately, I get re-mitigated when Thunderbird is restarted 🤦

Comment 24

[Ian Eales]

As a temporary workaround until this RBI is fixed, folders can be color coded.
Just make a map image and leave it open on the desktop...

Comment 25

[wje]

This is an idiotic change, more dev-nanny assumptions about what users want. I have, er had, separate sent folder names for different email names I use, now I have a bunch of 'sent' folders with no identification as to what they actually are. This is not at all useful. Please fix this BACK!
Otherwise, I'll just have to revert to a prior version and not get any updates. And then probably find a new email client.
Bill

Comment 26

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Thank you all for the feedback, even if some are strong.
We really appreciate the insights in comment 19 as it depicts a scenario we haven't considered.
We're evaluating a potential temporary backout of this change and other solutions, please be patient.

This is some further rationale to explain this change.

• A new user that uses Thunderbird for the first time in en-US locale with their English Gmail account, we'll see the common folder names like Inbox, Sent, etc.
• The user is bilingual, they speak Italian and they have also an Italian email account.
• They add this new Italian account and now they see "Posta Inviata, Cestino, etc", even tho their Thunderbird installation is in en-US.
  This is a confusing scenario for users and looks like a mistake with Thunderbird being unable to properly handle different accounts.

I understand that for some users the inconsistent folder names was a feature and not a bug, being used to visually distinguish multiple "Sent" folders when organized in the same section.

Question for everyone, would allowing the rename of those special folders a welcome addition?
We're evaluating adding the ability to change the folder name only locally for your profile without affecting the name on the servers, especially for those servers that don't allow renaming them (for example the Inbox folder).

I would like to ask for everyone to abide to the BugZilla etiquette and community participation guidelines.
I hope you all can understand that these changes come from a good place of trying to improve Thunderbird. We understand your frustration and we apologize for it.
Let's maintain the discussion focused on the UX issues and usage problems, without adding the unneeded "colourful" insults.
Thank you

Comment 27

[Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770]]

I think, maybe this 'forced' cosmetic folder name should only be applied to the root level of the directory? Not in any Shared Folders or Other Users.
I don't think it's a bad idea to generalize all naming option into one, especially with Junk, Spam, and whatnot, but it shouldn't just throw everything out of the window and surprise any user who just updated to 146.

The result - in my case - shouldn't be that I need to rename it to the IMAP folder name, it should use the original name - the same as in previous Thunderbird versions.

Renaming a folder only locally would be a nice addition, regardless of this issue here.
Also, to change the icon (Sent, etc) while we are at it.

Comment 28

[wje]

Being able to rename locally would solve the problem for me. One note, the folder that got renamed was not my sent folder, it was a separately-named folder on the imap server side, but it got renamed anyway. I would attach a screenshot of the doveadm mailbox list -u xxx except apparently I can't. In any case, the folders that got renamed are NOT named Send on the server side.

Bill

PS - if the colorful insult bit was addressed to me, sorry, but it is a huge pet peeve of mine, and not just specific to Thunderbird. It seems endemic in software these days and frequently changes seem gratuitous (and frequently are, web pages for example) to users and not really thought trough.

Comment 29

[Daniel Calcoen]

Ciao Alessandro,
if I understand correctly (comment 26), the renaming is linked to the use of the locale (like en-US), is this right ?
so if i change to en-UK, TB will rename again,and if change to fr-CH, rename again ?
There are lot of countries, not just people or organizations, that are multilingual and have different locales (in the same country). i.e. Switzerland has 4 official languages.
Let the people choose to use "standard" names or theirs, is wise; force them to use what you think is the "standard" name ... well ... you see what happens with this TB version ...
I feel this is like the use of the . (dot) or the , (comma) for the decimals in Excel ... (not even to mention the renaming of the functions names) ... if you try to force all Excel user to use . (dot) well ... it will be complicated (you can google the horror histories about this)
Multilingual people are use to handle different languages because they are ... well ... multilingual and they know how to read, understand and handle that, they don't need help; and people that is not multilingual and use the wrong language will quickly realize that is the wrong language and change to the good one; again they don't need help.
To describe it in other words, in the industry normally the start/on button are green and the stop/off buttons are red, ... I'm color blind (green/red) so I appreciate the use of (0) and (I) or other ways of identification. If some standardization committee decides that the use of a red and a green lamp or color is enough to assure the safety of all the population, I'll not agree.
Regards
Daniel

Comment 30

[Daniel Calcoen]

ahhh, and in my different laptops (MacOS, Linux, Windows) with different locales my TBs will show different folder names ?
Daniel

Comment 32

[Ian Eales]

"We really appreciate the insights in comment 19 as it depicts a scenario we haven't considered."

Some of us have been using email decades longer than some of the programmers have lived. And some have collected accounts on multiple platforms in multiple countries.

After decades of use, the pattern of the folder names is ingrained, and we know what account we're using by pattern recognition. When they are suddenly all the same, it appears to be a server failure or TB has lost connection.

I'll wager there are MANY, MANY server admins who are needlessly answering help tickets about 'missing' folders

Comment 33

[Michael Lease]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

Question for everyone, would allowing the rename of those special folders a welcome addition?
We're evaluating adding the ability to change the folder name only locally for your profile without affecting the name on the servers, especially for those servers that don't allow renaming them (for example the Inbox folder).

This would help me a lot. In my particular use case, I am keeping incoming and outgoing mail for each identity in its own folder. Calling them all "Sent" renders those folders very difficult to use; I have to inspect each "Sent" folder to determine which identity it belongs to (I have at least a couple dozen such identities and folders).

I did try rolling back to version 145. but since the update moved the profile to 146, my profile with all of my identities and rules are unavailable in 145. I think I'm going to have to gut it out with 146 until this gets fixed, or else rebuild everything in 145 (and disable updates until the fix appears in a later version).

Comment 34

[Michael Lease]

(In reply to Ian Eales from comment #32)

"We really appreciate the insights in comment 19 as it depicts a scenario we haven't considered."

Some of us have been using email decades longer than some of the programmers have lived. And some have collected accounts on multiple platforms in multiple countries.

After decades of use, the pattern of the folder names is ingrained, and we know what account we're using by pattern recognition. When they are suddenly all the same, it appears to be a server failure or TB has lost connection.

I'll wager there are MANY, MANY server admins who are needlessly answering help tickets about 'missing' folders

Yep! My first thought was that my profile had become corrupted, and I created a new one. Fortunately, I don't have other users to support; I can only imagine what a nightmare THAT would have been!

Comment 35

[Ian Eales]

The server name should be the default name displayed in TB.

Local rename should not affect the server.

IF the server name is changed, the mismatch should be warned and the user be able to choose update or keep local.

Comment 36

[Michael Lease]

(In reply to Daniel Calcoen from comment #21)

what a mess! fantastic idea, really genius ...

anyway, a workaround
install the add-on "FolderFlags"
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/folderflags/?src=search

click on your name screwed folder, rigth-clik, in the pop-up menu, click properties
now in the tab "General Information" you can see the "Name" and in location the server name
in the "Flags" tab remove the tick that has renamed your folder ...

I tried that, but as soon as I send a message from an identity with a corresponding folder, the folder shows up as "Sent" again. Sigh....

Comment 37

[Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770]]

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #33)

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

I did try rolling back to version 145. but since the update moved the profile to 146, my profile with all of my identities and rules are unavailable in 145. I think I'm going to have to gut it out with 146 until this gets fixed, or else rebuild everything in 145 (and disable updates until the fix appears in a later version).

You can roll back to Version 145 and use the flag "--allow-downgrade" when starting Thunderbird to use the existing profile.
That's what I did.

Comment 38

[Francesco]

I have multiple IMAP account on my TB. I've created local Archive folders for any of it and when I archive messages TBmove to this folders.

archivio [e-mail]
archivio [e-mail]
archivio [e-mail]

Now, all of this folder are renamed as Archives and I cannot remane it.

Archives
Archives
Archives

Comment 40

[Francesco]

ALL Folders renamed

<picture>
<img src="https://ibb.co/d0gydwMX" alt="Folders renamed" style="width:auto;">
</picture>

Comment 41

[Hannes Hauswedell]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

Thank you all for the feedback, even if some are strong.
We really appreciate the insights in comment 19 as it depicts a scenario we haven't considered.
We're evaluating a potential temporary backout of this change and other solutions, please be patient.

Thank you!

This is some further rationale to explain this change.

• A new user that uses Thunderbird for the first time in en-US locale with their English Gmail account, we'll see the common folder names like Inbox, Sent, etc.
• The user is bilingual, they speak Italian and they have also an Italian email account.
• They add this new Italian account and now they see "Posta Inviata, Cestino, etc", even tho their Thunderbird installation is in en-US.
  This is a confusing scenario for users and looks like a mistake with Thunderbird being unable to properly handle different accounts.

I understand that for some users the inconsistent folder names was a feature and not a bug, being used to visually distinguish multiple "Sent" folders when organized in the same section.

What do you mean by "inconsistent folder names"? Is this a GMail problem? If it is, can you please "fix" it only for GMail?
My folder names were very consistent before the TB upgrade dropped.

Question for everyone, would allowing the rename of those special folders a welcome addition?

I don't understand what this means. I have always been able to rename all of my folders.

We're evaluating adding the ability to change the folder name only locally for your profile without affecting the name on the servers, especially for those servers that don't allow renaming them (for example the Inbox folder).

From my perspective, this is absolutely the wrong direction. You invoked "consistency" above. Please just leave the folder names as they are on the server! That's the only way to get consistency. Take for example the mobile app—which incidentally is also "Thunderbird"—and currently shows different names from Thunderbird Desktop, because it adheres to the server names.

I would like to ask for everyone to abide to the BugZilla etiquette and community participation guidelines.
I hope you all can understand that these changes come from a good place of trying to improve Thunderbird. We understand your frustration and we apologize for it.

I am sorry, if my humorous comment above appeared insulting. That was not my intent.

I think that the responses were partly incredulous/inpolite, because the change highlighted that scenarios that were quite "normal" not long ago, like using multiple identities or having a joint inbox/sent folder, are apparently not part of regular testing anymore. This makes users afraid that features they have relied upon for 20+ years are on the chopping block.

From my anecdotal evidence, I'd also like to point out that it's not just power-users who expect this behaviour. Especially public sector employees and older people are used to clear folder structures and always finding things in the same places. Even if the server folder can't be renamed and is in English, it's easier to explain to a German grannie, that "Sent" is the place where sent e-mails are (especially with added iconography) than explaining that it's called "Gesendet" on her computer and "Gesendete Nachrichten" on her tablet and "Verschickte Nachrichten" on her phone, or whatever else creative app developers come up with. Different names on different devices also add to the false perception that e-mails are actually "on the device" instead of "in a folder on the server".
It's similar, to how dynamic or search-based folders (like in Gmail), "virtual folders", "combined inboxes" etc are highly confusing to them ("Why is the e-mail in two folders at the same time?"); or how the dynamic ribbon interfaces in office results in these users not finding the actions the need.

Sometimes it pays off not to chase every trend :)

Comment 43

[[:Lorenzo27]]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

Question for everyone, would allowing the rename of those special folders a welcome addition?
We're evaluating adding the ability to change the folder name only locally for your profile without affecting the name on the servers, especially for those servers that don't allow renaming them (for example the Inbox folder).

That would be nice, but I think that when renaming a special folder it would be better to show both options "Server Name" and "Localised Name" so users can choose which one they prefer and which one to change.
If the user wants to change the name on the server Thunderbird should try to do it (as you can see in this bug many of this folders are normal folders that users set as sent, archive or whatever, which can and must be renamed on the server) and if the server didn't allow it Thunderbird should give the user a warning and let them rename it only locally (changing locally without making the user aware of it would only create confusion about why the name on the server and on other computers is different).

To make things easier to manage with multiple accounts you can also add under "Copies & Folders" an option named "Use localised names for all special folders of this account on this computer" or something like that. This option would change the behaviour of all special folders of the account and could also be activated by default to add some consistency to Thunderbird, which is your aim.
(Personal note: I would prefer to find the folders like they are on the server, even if they are in English, and if I don't like something be able to rename them or activate this option, but I understand many first time users wouldn't go this far and just blame Thunderbird for not respecting the language they set).
Under that there would be an "Advanced" button that would open a list of all the special folders of each account, here users would be able to see and choose what they desire for each special folder between: "Server name" and "Localised/Customised Name".
(Just to let you understand what I mean I'm thinking about something like the "Message Synchronising" option under "Synchronisation & Storage").

Comment 44

[lyrabee]

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #36)

(In reply to Daniel Calcoen from comment #21)

what a mess! fantastic idea, really genius ...

anyway, a workaround
install the add-on "FolderFlags"
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/folderflags/?src=search

click on your name screwed folder, rigth-clik, in the pop-up menu, click properties
now in the tab "General Information" you can see the "Name" and in location the server name
in the "Flags" tab remove the tick that has renamed your folder ...

I tried that, but as soon as I send a message from an identity with a corresponding folder, the folder shows up as "Sent" again. Sigh....

have to confirm that unfortunately *sigh

Comment 45

[Michael Lease]

(In reply to Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770] from comment #37)

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #33)

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

I did try rolling back to version 145. but since the update moved the profile to 146, my profile with all of my identities and rules are unavailable in 145. I think I'm going to have to gut it out with 146 until this gets fixed, or else rebuild everything in 145 (and disable updates until the fix appears in a later version).

You can roll back to Version 145 and use the flag "--allow-downgrade" when starting Thunderbird to use the existing profile.
That's what I did.

Thank you! I've been using Thunderbird for over 20 years, and wasn't aware of that flag (of course, I've never had occasion to roll back my version before).

Comment 46

[wje]

That was a great tip! I've been using TB since it first came out and didn't know about it either. Whew, things are back to normal. I also turned off auto updates.

Hopefully, this issue will get reverted soon. It would be nice if the 'upgrades' were separated into cosmetic changes vs actual bug fixes, but that would be a lot of work. Oh well, AI will fix it all, right?

Bill

Comment 47

[itsjustarumour]

Just updated to Thunderbird 146.0 on Windows 11.

My "All Mail" folder has now been renamed to "Archive", so I now have two "Archive folders".

Comment 48

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Thank you all again for the feedback and detailed info.
We're backing out the changes introduced in 146 and hopefully release a quick hot fix version before the end of the week to revert those changes.

I will close this bug once that's done and 146 is out with the confirmed issue fixed.
Cheers,

Comment 49

[Francesco]

Please see my comment 22. Backing out bug 1993842 again will not solve the issues raised here, it will only avoid some issues that bug 1998456 is fixing for local folders.

The main issue will remain as stated: imap (and ews) folders do not use the same name as used on server. This issue remains in TB 147.

I understand your drive for consistency, but the same folder has different names in various places of the TB UI, see comment 10 and comment 11 for details. How will you address that?

Comment 50

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

(In reply to Francesco from comment #49)

Please see my comment 22. Backing out bug 1993842 again will not solve the issues raised here, it will only avoid some issues that bug 1998456 is fixing for local folders.

Backing out bug 1993842 will reintroduce the behaviour of 145, which doesn't localize local folder names nor server folders (unless their strings match the English locale already), so the issue raised in bug 1998456 won't be present.

The main issue will remain as stated: imap (and ews) folders do not use the same name as used on server. This issue remains in TB 147.

We're leaving those patches and the consequent fixes in the 147 beta and 148 daily cycle for now because we need more time to evaluate a permanent solution.
Our priority right now is to remove the issue in the main monthly release channel.

I understand your drive for consistency, but the same folder has different names in various places of the TB UI, see comment 10 and comment 11 for details. How will you address that?

We will need more time for this, and we will try to tackle this issue before the next 147 stable release, which is during mid-January.

Comment 51

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

There really is no need for the Location field in the folder properties dialog to exist. It doesn't provide any useful information that the user can do something with. The imap:// or mailbox:// URLs are a completely internal construct and in fact we're going to be getting rid of them with the new database work that's going on. We could instead provide the path to the folder on the server which would be consistent with what you see in the subscribe dialog.

The status bar is a bit of an issue. In some places it uses the server's identifier for a folder, e.g. Archives.2025, because it's fed by code that doesn't have the concept of folders, and in other places it uses the folder's name (which isn't localised, and this is a bug).

But neither of these are really the problem here (which is that our criteria for which folder names get localised are too wide¹) so we won't continue to discuss them in this bug.

¹ As it happens, we've always localised some folders (e.g. Inbox) and these inconsistencies have always existed. They're just more obvious now.

Comment 52

[:glob ✱]

(In reply to wje from comment #25)

This is an idiotic change, more dev-nanny assumptions about what users want. I have, er had, separate sent folder names for different email names I use, now I have a bunch of 'sent' folders with no identification as to what they actually are. This is not at all useful. Please fix this BACK!
Otherwise, I'll just have to revert to a prior version and not get any updates. And then probably find a new email client.

Bill,

This is a polite reminder that Bugzilla is our professional working environment as well as our issue tracker. I encourage you to review our Community Participation and Bugzilla Etiquette guidelines; comments that help move issues towards a resolution are always welcome. Comments that add nothing more than demands that a resolution occur, however, are not.

Comment 53

[Francesco]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

Thank you all for the feedback, even if some are strong.
We really appreciate the insights in comment 19 as it depicts a scenario we haven't considered.
We're evaluating a potential temporary backout of this change and other solutions, please be patient.

This is some further rationale to explain this change.

• A new user that uses Thunderbird for the first time in en-US locale with their English Gmail account, we'll see the common folder names like Inbox, Sent, etc.
• The user is bilingual, they speak Italian and they have also an Italian email account.
• They add this new Italian account and now they see "Posta Inviata, Cestino, etc", even tho their Thunderbird installation is in en-US.
  This is a confusing scenario for users and looks like a mistake with Thunderbird being unable to properly handle different accounts.

I understand that for some users the inconsistent folder names was a feature and not a bug, being used to visually distinguish multiple "Sent" folders when organized in the same section.

Question for everyone, would allowing the rename of those special folders a welcome addition?
We're evaluating adding the ability to change the folder name only locally for your profile without affecting the name on the servers, especially for those servers that don't allow renaming them (for example the Inbox folder).

I would like to ask for everyone to abide to the BugZilla etiquette and community participation guidelines.
I hope you all can understand that these changes come from a good place of trying to improve Thunderbird. We understand your frustration and we apologize for it.
Let's maintain the discussion focused on the UX issues and usage problems, without adding the unneeded "colourful" insults.
Thank you

In my case, I'm using Local folders subdir for Archive of multiple account using a shared local folder on NAS.

I called them:
Local folder

• Archivio [e-mail]
• Archivio [e-mail]
• Archivio [e-mail]

Now, all the directory are named Archivi and I cannot identify what is the account As you can see in the image: https://ibb.co/d0gydwMX (sorry, i can't attach the image in line)

Local folder

• Archivi
• Archivi
• Archivi

I should easily identify the correct folder. I have more than 15 account per installation in a company environment.

Rolling out to 145 solve temporarily my problem?

Comment 54

[Laurent thierry]

(In reply to Daniel Calcoen from comment #21)

what a mess! fantastic idea, really genius ...

anyway, a workaround
install the add-on "FolderFlags"
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/folderflags/?src=search

click on your name screwed folder, rigth-clik, in the pop-up menu, click properties
now in the tab "General Information" you can see the "Name" and in location the server name
in the "Flags" tab remove the tick that has renamed your folder ...

I found several of my folder with more than une ticked (?)

cheers
Daniel

Good idea , but after unmark the archive flags ( I see m real name of folder again) , the name immediatly come back to "archives" :-(

Comment 55

[Laurent thierry]

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #45)

(In reply to Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770] from comment #37)

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #33)

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

I did try rolling back to version 145. but since the update moved the profile to 146, my profile with all of my identities and rules are unavailable in 145. I think I'm going to have to gut it out with 146 until this gets fixed, or else rebuild everything in 145 (and disable updates until the fix appears in a later version).

You can roll back to Version 145 and use the flag "--allow-downgrade" when starting Thunderbird to use the existing profile.
That's what I did.

Thank you! I've been using Thunderbird for over 20 years, and wasn't aware of that flag (of course, I've never had occasion to roll back my version before).

I roll back to 145 : it now perfectly works as before . I see now the name of my folder ,i choose for arhive and not more the name archives !! THX !

Comment 56

[Laurent thierry]

(In reply to Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770] from comment #37)

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #33)

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

I did try rolling back to version 145. but since the update moved the profile to 146, my profile with all of my identities and rules are unavailable in 145. I think I'm going to have to gut it out with 146 until this gets fixed, or else rebuild everything in 145 (and disable updates until the fix appears in a later version).

You can roll back to Version 145 and use the flag "--allow-downgrade" when starting Thunderbird to use the existing profile.
That's what I did.

It works like this waiting next enhancement ! DO not forget to stop automatic upgrade of thunderbird in the setting !!!!

Comment 57

[Michael Lease]

(In reply to Laurent thierry from comment #56)

(In reply to Dominik Pflegerl [:dom6770] from comment #37)

(In reply to Michael Lease from comment #33)

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #26)

I did try rolling back to version 145. but since the update moved the profile to 146, my profile with all of my identities and rules are unavailable in 145. I think I'm going to have to gut it out with 146 until this gets fixed, or else rebuild everything in 145 (and disable updates until the fix appears in a later version).

You can roll back to Version 145 and use the flag "--allow-downgrade" when starting Thunderbird to use the existing profile.
That's what I did.

It works like this waiting next enhancement ! DO not forget to stop automatic upgrade of thunderbird in the setting !!!!

Yeah, that part I knew about. It's in Settings/General, about 3/4 of the way down under "Updates." Tick the radio button for "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them."

Comment 58

[Corey Bryant]

The change for bug 1993842 has been reverted in 146.0.1, which was just released.

Comment 59

[Daniel Calcoen]

ohh THXs a lot,
happy user running 146.0.1 !

Comment 60

[wje]

(In reply to :glob ✱ from comment #52)

(In reply to wje from comment #25)

This is an idiotic change, more dev-nanny assumptions about what users want. I have, er had, separate sent folder names for different email names I use, now I have a bunch of 'sent' folders with no identification as to what they actually are. This is not at all useful. Please fix this BACK!
Otherwise, I'll just have to revert to a prior version and not get any updates. And then probably find a new email client.

Bill,

This is a polite reminder that Bugzilla is our professional working environment as well as our issue tracker. I encourage you to review our Community Participation and Bugzilla Etiquette guidelines; comments that help move issues towards a resolution are always welcome. Comments that add nothing more than demands that a resolution occur, however, are not.

My apologies. This happens to be one of my pet peeves (infuriations?), and it's fairly endemic, not just picking on you. Basically, too many devs change things because of some reason, make it better, I think it should work this way, whatever, but without understanding how users actually use the product. I had to fight this constantly at work (Sr dev, lead architect, big company that should know better). In any case, thanks for the quick resolution!
Apologies again,
Bill

Comment 61

[Ian Eales]

^^^ Ditto

Comment 62

[Anje]

(In reply to Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan) from comment #51)

There really is no need for the Location field in the folder properties dialog to exist. It doesn't provide any useful information that the user can do something with. The imap:// or mailbox:// URLs are a completely internal construct and in fact we're going to be getting rid of them with the new database work that's going on. We could instead provide the path to the folder on the server which would be consistent with what you see in the subscribe dialog.

Please that is a big no no... currently it's the only way to find out what the folder is linked to as the Location still has the server name for the folder.

The status bar is a bit of an issue. In some places it uses the server's identifier for a folder, e.g. Archives.2025, because it's fed by code that doesn't have the concept of folders, and in other places it uses the folder's name (which isn't localised, and this is a bug).

But neither of these are really the problem here (which is that our criteria for which folder names get localised are too wide¹) so we won't continue to discuss them in this bug.

¹ As it happens, we've always localised some folders (e.g. Inbox) and these inconsistencies have always existed. They're just more obvious now.

I am wondering why this incorrect renaming of folders for imap accounts was considered worth all the effort when I'm sure there are plenty of other issues that would have benefited from time and energy.
There was never a problem with the name of folders in imap accounts.

Did anyone consider what it would be like in an office environment where users may be using different email clients?
Identical naming conventions do not work. Individuality has always helped to differentiate anything.

When there are problems, the last thing you need is this type of identical structure where no one knows which folder is correctly named or not.
How do you converse via the Support Forum to help people who have an issue with more than one folder with identical name and instruct them on how to discover which is the real default folder? I'm aware of the issues that existed prior to this alteration and how to help people resolve them by comparing the view in Folder PAne with the view of a webmail account and using those images to point to which is which and how to fix.
That is no use anymore.

Problems are being created and it needs to be set back to normality as soon as possible.

Comment 64

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

For those interested in continuing this conversation, I kicked off a discussion in our mailing list: https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/planning/T42889d86e87f0dcf/naming-things-is-hard-especially-folders

Comment 65

[Corey Bryant]

Hi All,

I recognize this bug is closed, but we are looking for some testing of a fix for this issue as soon as possible (release is Tues Jan 13th).

We have a fix that we are uplifting to 147.0 that limits localization of special folder names to specific names, and adds the mail.useLocalizedFolderNames preference to toggle that localization.

To test you will have to install Thunderbird from https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/147.0b5-candidates/build1/. Note that we don't plan to release an official 147.0b5 because we already merged beta->release and it gets complicated to unwind the merge.

Please reach out with any feedback, good or bad.

Thanks in advance,
Corey

Comment 66

[Christian Riechers]

The problem discussed at length in this bug still isn't resolved with bug 2006549. That is Thunderbird does not respect the folder names used on an IMAP server, and instead renames them with it's own folder name for "consistency" sake.
This isn't about localization at all, it affects the English version of Thunderbird, where e.g. a Junk folder on the server gets renamed to Spam for no good reason. This is inconsistent, and causes unnecessary confusion.
This was all good with v146.0.1, but now it's broken again.

Comment 67

[Christian Riechers]

Scrap comment #66 above. I just realized that setting the pref mail.useLocalizedFolderNames to false in Daily 148.0a1 (2026-01-09) restores the normal behavior. That's good news.
However, that means the default value for the pref will be true?

Comment 68

[Corey Bryant]

Yes, they are localized by default, mail.useLocalizedFolderNames=true. You can disable that behavior and use the names from the server by setting the preference to false.

Comment 69

[Anje]

my gmail and bt acount work correctly after changing 'mail.useLocalizedFolderNames' from true to false.
Why is this not 'false' by default ? Correct display is not considered worthy of being default?

As this is an important feature which people would need to access easily, could an easy to access option to switch on and off be put into 'Settings' > 'Appearance'.