205092 - Would like 'recall' feature to find and destroy mail that I sent. Pine can do it.

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: SMTP, enhancement)

Description

[Ion Chalmers Freeman]

User-Agent:       Opera/7.10 (Windows NT 5.0; U)  [en]
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401

When I send a message, I would like to be able to follow up with a note to its 
recipient's mail client that I would like the message deleted.
There are all sorts of good reasons for this -- I'm logging the bug because I 
sent out a mail without a URL it needed. So, I sent it again with the URL, which 
is bound to confuse the people who received it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Send mail
2. Realize error of ways
3. fret that the mail can not be recalled

Actual Results:  
Sent near duplicate email

Expected Results:  
allowed me to recall message

Comment 1

[Alfonso Martinez]

I think that for this to work both sides must be using Pine. Am I wrong?

What happens if the recipient is using another mail client? does he get a second
mail with an order to delete a previous mail?

Comment 2

[Jo Hermans]

I know that Microsoft Outlook can do it, but *only* in combination of Microsoft
Exchange Server, becuase it's not a standard feature of SMTP, POP or IMAP. Are
you using Exchange Server too ?

I think this is a url that shows this behaviour :
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Apr/0176.html

More info (userinterface of Outlook) at
http://www.uwsp.edu/it/exchange/FAQs/faqrecallmessage.htm 

While this is all very interesting, it's a Exchange-only feature.

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

Ok, after reading http://www.uwsp.edu/it/exchange/FAQs/faqrecallmessage.htm, I
think it's not completely true.

It seems that recall-messages are recognized by the mailclient (Outlook, Pine).
Sometimes this will result in both messages being automatically removed (the
user never knows that there was a message that was recalled later). But
sometimes, the user will see both messages, and when they open the
recall-message they can get a notification that the other message is recalled,
and sometimes they get asked if they want to recall that message. But I don't
know what happens if you open the original message. Very confusing for the user.

But it should be possible to implement the same behaviour (well, better ofcourse
:-) in a non-Outlook mailclient, like Pine has done. An Exchange Server should
not be really needed (although this is mentioned as a requirement on several
webpages), the client can do it on its own (like Pine). But maybe can the
Exchange Server do it on behalve of the user.

Comment 4

[Ion Chalmers Freeman]

I think pine and MSOE do it the same way --- that is, that you can delete from 
either receiving mail client what you sent from the other mail client. I don't 
have the resources to test this just now.
In pine you either get a prompt asking you if you will let the message be 
recalled, or a notice that it was recalled, depending on how you've configured 
it (this is the infinitely configurable pine we are speaking of.)
In MSOE and Outlook, you get a dialog box asking you if you'll let the message 
be recalled.

Comment 5

[jesse]

This is a bit of a complicated feature that really lacks a standard, however,
exchange is used pretty widely and people that use Outlook use this feature
regularly and most of the time it really does work.  The major flaw being that
sometimes the exchange server sends a message back saying the email was
successfully recalled, and sometimes it doesn't but the email still is
successfully recalled.  I'm not sure why.  This is a worthwhile feature to
implement in Mozilla - I consider this one of those major features that need to
be implemented to target users that are currently using M$ products.  I know
many developers do not care about that particular audience, but I believe it is
a large and important group of people that are not joining the Mozilla community
and have legitimate reasons for not doing so.  I know plenty of people that held
out until a spell-checker was implemented (I am myself guilty of not installing
this on employee systems because of this).  I hope this bug does not take quite
as long as that one did to reach fruition.

Comment 6

[zug_treno]

Duplicate of/related to bug 234235?

Comment 7

[Ion Chalmers Freeman]

Bug 234235 has a cooler number than this bug, but that's about reproducing MS
Outlook's Recall Feature, while this is about recalling mail items ;) And
furthermore, it was closed "won't fix", while I'm waiting for this feature to
start proselytizing.
You don't have to do anything Pine doesn't do! C'mon!

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

if you can attach a protocol log of what PINE does to issue a recall, we can
look at it. Does it only work with MS Exchange servers?

Comment 9

[Ion Chalmers Freeman]

No, pine works with regular old servers. It predates exchange!
I haven't actually _used pine in years. But, I still pine for many of its
features. Try these guys:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

there's no internet standards way of recalling mail that's already been sent.
Does this only work if the recipient of the message is also Pine?

Comment 11

[Ion Chalmers Freeman]

I don't know -- I'm really just an end user of mail applications. If you want to
write a mozilla mail recall standard, maybe all of the other mail clients would
pick it up. Then, I'd be a happy little mail recaller. You know the message ID
and the recipients...

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.