265472 - Option to expunge deleted mail immediately (compact folders / purge right after moving message to trash)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Luke Jagger]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 0.8 (20040913)

I use a webmail view onto my IMAP account in addition to using Thunderbird, and
it will continue to display mails that have been deleted but not expunged until
Thunderbird exits.
It would therefore be nice to have an option to get Thunderbird to expunge
immediately upon delete, so that such other access of the account does not
continue to show up these deleted mails until I quit Thunderbird (For example, I
leave it running on my laptop and Hibernate - well, the laptop does at least:)


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Delete a mail
2. View the IMAP folder in another mail client or webmail interface

Actual Results:  
Deleted mail is still visible as it hasn't been expunged.


Expected Results:  
Deleted mail to expunge immediately as an option.

Comment 1

[Prognathous]

I couldn't find any previous requests, so I'm confirming this one. It echos my
own problem with using Thunderbird in parallel to the web interface of my
preferred service (fastmail.fm). 

There are quite a few users who don't migrate to IMAP simply due to how mail
clients handles message deletion. Fixing this bug may help change that.

Prog.

Comment 2

[Roland Stuehmer]

Just to clarify: This bug is only applicable if "When I delete a message:" is
set to 'Move it to the Trash folder'.

If you'd use the IMAP delete model ('Mark it as deleted'), everything works as
expected and what I do is just click File -> Compact Folders to expunge
recursively from all folders when I'm done with a sufficient amount of
"deleting". This might be a possible workaround for you, too.

Regards.

Comment 3

[Robert Sander]

could be a dup of bug #227371

Comment 4

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

I understand (as has been noted in bugs similar to and possibly duplicates of
this bug) that marking a message as 'deleted' via Imap is intended behaviour.
However, when "When I delete a message: Move it to the Trash folder" is
configured, it would seem to me that moving to Trash should replace the standard
Imap behaviour of marking as deleted.

Comment 5

[Ben Kennish]

Re: the comment made by James Teh

Yes!!  Surely it makes no sense to mark as deleted AND move to the trash
folder?!  Who in their right mind would actually want that?  Especially as
thunderbird doesn't show u mail marked as deleted when u have the 'move to
trash' mode selected.

Comment 6

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 324442 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Tim K]

Apparently this was implemented at some point but was not integrated in the 1.5
release.

"#000000 AVIARY 1.0 fix partner bug 372, optionally issue imap expunge after
every delete"

No idea what "partner bug 372" means.

Please see this thread:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=367639

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

it wasn't in 1.5 - we can put it on the trunk as a hidden pref so that it will be in 2.0

Comment 9

[Tim K]

That would be great. Any chance that it could also be patched for a future 1.5.x release? It will be a while before I (and others) can upgrade to 2.0

Comment 10

[Ben Kennish]

(In reply to comment #8)
> it wasn't in 1.5 - we can put it on the trunk as a hidden pref so that it will
> be in 2.0

Why a hidden pref?  This isn't some weird thing that only techies want to do you know!  Every single one of the employees at my work have come to me asking me why their mail isn't deleted properly when they have it set to move to trash.  This is a LOGIC BUG with the software that, imho, should be fixed ASAP in all current releases.  </Rant>

Comment 11

[Tim K]

I agree it should not be a hidden preference in the 2.0 version, but for the 1.5.x builds, I would be more than happy to see it as a hidden preference. Any chance this will happen for 1.5.x please?

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This is the checkin that fixed it on the aviary 1.0 branch:
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=all&branch=AVIARY_1_0_20040515_BRANCH&branchtype=match&dir=&file=&filetype=match&who=bienvenu%25nventure.com&whotype=match&sortby=Date&hours=2&date=explicit&mindate=2005-05-10&maxdate=2005-05-11&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot

Sounds like defaulting this pref to true would be most logical.

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: proposed fix

This is the aviariy patch ported to trunk. It also adds the pref to mailnews.js with default as true (the aviary checkin did not put the pref in mailnews.js at all)

Seems to work fine when I tested it.

Comment 14

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 211606 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

default as true is not something we want.

Comment 15

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: proposed fix, v2

ok, default to false

Comment 16

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 211634 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix, v2

thx...

Comment 17

[Ben Kennish]

(In reply to comment #14)
> (From update of attachment 211606 [details] [diff] [review] [edit])
> default as true is not something we want.

WHY?! Sorry guys but I REALLY cannot see the logic in having mail marked as deleted AND moved to the trash!  Neither can any of my colleagues at work.  And don't think that this is a minor problem.  I have had big problems persuading people to use Thunderbird instead of Web Mail software because of this!!

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

Because the majority of imap users are not in your situation of reading both web mail and imap at the same time. Issuing an expunge on every delete increases server load and also slows down the client. Defaults are set for for what we think are the majority of users.

you don't have to use Trash if you don't want to - you can switch the imap delete model under imap server advanced settings to look like web-mail, with deleted messages shown with a big red x.

Comment 19

[Ben Kennish]

(In reply to comment #18)
> Because the majority of imap users are not in your situation of reading both
> web mail and imap at the same time. Issuing an expunge on every delete
> increases server load and also slows down the client. Defaults are set for for
> what we think are the majority of users.

Fair point.  But perhaps at least the "Expunge Inbox on Exit" option could be changed to an "Expunge on Exit:" drop down with...

"All"
"Inbox"
and "None"

options?  Ideally though, as I say, I'd like TB to expunge as soon as a mail has been successfully copied to the trash and then marked as deleted.

Comment 20

[Joshua Rochester]

Any update on including this patch in a build? It looks like it's been reviewed. I'd love to see a UI, but even a hidden pref would solve problems for me _now_.

Comment 21

[David :Bienvenu]

I'll try to check it in when the trunk opens.

Comment 22

[David :Bienvenu]

fixed on trunk.