2008420 - Counter doesn't increment for IMAP SPAM folder

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[David VANTYGHEM]

Attachment: Capture d’écran du 2026-01-03 15-47-50.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:146.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/146.0

Steps to reproduce:

Start Thunderbird 140.6.0esr (64 bits) on Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.2, with many IMAP accounts.

Actual results:

New messages are downloaded in Thunderbird, from IMAP servers.
Counters are incremented in folders where new messages are downloaded and these folders names become bold, excepted for SPAM folders.
It's a problem because one think there are no new messages in SPAM folders and after a few days, they are automatically deleted by IMAP server without being read.

Expected results:

When new messages are downloaded in SPAM folders, counters should increment and folders names should become bold.

Comment 1

[David VANTYGHEM]

When one or more messages are incoming in SPAM folders, if one click on all of these folders without knowing if they contain messages or not, the counters appears and are updated.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

It works, but if you didn't opt in (right click, tick "when getting new messages, include this folder") Thunderbird wouldn't know about the messages.

Comment 3

[David VANTYGHEM]

I will try with this option. Could Thunderbird developers activate it by default? Everyone is loosing messages because of this hidden option not activated by default.

Comment 4

[David VANTYGHEM]

Could you let my bug report open and not close it as solved? The problem is still here, it is not solved for all people who will never find this hidden option.

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I don't think we should enable that by default. It's really up to the user, what they want to do. Some might want it, but it's not been a frequent complaint.

Comment 6

[David VANTYGHEM]

With older versions of Thunderbird, it was working well. Since new versions, one can not see anymore when new mails are incoming in spam folders. And these mails are lost because providers delete them after a few days. It's really a major change and bug in Thunderbird. You can not ignore it.

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This never changed, it was always like this in Thunderbird.

Comment 8

[David VANTYGHEM]

No, really, it was working with older versions.

Comment 9

[David VANTYGHEM]

SPAM folders counters were automatically updated in older versions.

Comment 10

[David VANTYGHEM]

Now, one must click everyday on each SPAM folder to see it updated. It's becoming really annoying to use Thunderbird.

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

No, but it all depends on how you interact with spam. If spam is moved from other folders to the spam folder by Thunderbird, then the folder is accessed and Thunderbird knows about the messages in it.

Comment 12

[David VANTYGHEM]

I am referring to a common use case, where the IMAP SPAM folders on computers are synchronized with the SPAM folders on servers. This is the most common method for Thunderbird users.