267727 - Group By Sort disabled for search results (QuickSearch, MailView, Virtual Folder)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 379806

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Pascal Berger]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041103 Firesheep/1.0RC2 (All your Firefox/1.0RC2 are belong to Firesomething)
Build Identifier: version 0.9 (20041103)

Under certain circumstances the "Threaded", "Unthreaded" and "Group By Sort"
menu items are permanently grayed out

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Sort by Subject
2. Press G (Group by Sort)
3. Sort by Read
4. Press G (Group by Sort)

Actual Results:  
"Threaded", "Unthreaded" and "Group By Sort" menu items are permanently grayed out

Expected Results:  
The menu items should be enabled again after changing the sorted column

Comment 1

[Max Moldmann]

Attachment: confirmed only for virtual folders

TB 0.9 (IMAP Account)
WinXP SP2

Comment 2

[Mike Fedyk]

One way to easily reproduce this is to have text in the search box.

I think the search box should not get input unless it is explicitly clicked on,
but that is another bug I'm sure.

The problem is that after first downloading TB 0.9 I was able to reproduce this
bug, but I didn't keep an eye on the search box while it was happening (I know I
have accidentally searched for "g" instead of turning on sort grouping several
times).

Comment 3

[Mike Fedyk]

oh, looks like the search focus issue I was talking about is bug 267765.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Presumably, Grouping is disabled for the same reasons Threading is.
Threading cannot be applied to search results -- bug 135326.

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 268143 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

*** Bug 270051 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

*** Bug 290279 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Jean-Michel Reghem]

It seems that in the future TB 1.5 RC2, the sort by group/thread choice is no more grayed out for search folders ...
It is strange, since the feature didn't work:

See for example the BFT test http://testrunner.mozilla.org/test.cgi?run_id=1697#2590

--- BEGIN DESCRIPTION BFT TEST ---

--> Message Grouping on Virtual Folder  	

   1. Create a Virtual Folder
   2. Go to View | Sort by and select Grouped by Sort

	

The Grouped by Sort option should be greyed out in the UI and not available for selection since the Grouped by Sort option does not operate on Virtual Folders; see bug 267727. 

--- END DESCRIPTION BFT TEST ---


--> so i've created a virtual folders to display only messages of a folder labeled as "important"
--> 3 mails in this virtual folder
--> View --> sort by Group (and threaded) is not grayed out ...
--> sort by group --> all the mails of the original folders are grouped, not only the 3 mails filtered by the search criteria

--> so, until it is available for virtual folders, i think the grayed out have to be back

(see attachement)

Comment 9

[Jean-Michel Reghem]

Attachment: Screen shot --> sort by group not grayed out

Screen shot --> sort by group not grayed out

Comment 10

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #8)
> It seems that in the future TB 1.5 RC2, the sort by group/thread choice is
> no more grayed out for search folders ...

Are you still seeing this?  With 1.5RC2 (1201 build) I see Group By Sort, Threaded and Unthreaded all disabled for a search folder -- but *not* for MailView or QuickSearch.  However, the behavior of selecting Group By Sort 
when QS or MV is selected is just as you describe for the virtual folder case:
*all* messages are shown, grouped.

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

if a virtual folder searches over multiple folders, group by sort is disabled. In all other situations, it should be enabled. Grouping in a cross-folder virtual folder is not trivial to implement because they're both implemented by orthogonal view classes.

Comment 12

[Danny Bloemendaal]

Trivial or not, it's one of the features that I miss the most and keeps me longing for Outlook 2003. Each mail belongs to a folder so it's pretty obvious from a user's point of view to be able to group them. I have many folders and each receives many new mails. I want a VF that shows unread items and I want them grouped by their folder so I can quickly decide what I want to check and what not. It also allows me (at least in Outlook) to select a group by clicking on the group name and delete all the mails in that group (ie folder) in one click. 

I was very disappointed that Thunderbird fails on this. It increases the user experience substantially.

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

I'm just documenting the fact that it's not trivial and why - I didn't say it wasn't worthwhile. But thanks for the info - we'd need to add grouping by location for cross-folder virtual folder grouping to be useful for you.

Comment 14

[Jean-Michel Reghem]

(In reply to comment #10)

> Are you still seeing this?  With 1.5RC2 (1201 build) I see Group By Sort,
> Threaded and Unthreaded all disabled for a search folder -- but *not* for
> MailView or QuickSearch.  However, the behavior of selecting Group By Sort 
> when QS or MV is selected is just as you describe for the virtual folder case:
> *all* messages are shown, grouped.
> 

(In reply to comment #11)

> if a virtual folder searches over multiple folders, group by sort is disabled.
> In all other situations, it should be enabled.


--> OK, it is true ...
The virtual folder created had a selection criteria inside a single folder ...
--> it is why the group by sort was not disabled ...
However, it was not correctly working as i said ...

Comment 15

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Given the fact that, even for a single-source search folder, selecting Grouped generates wrong results, maybe those SortBy menu items should *still* be disabled.  

See also bug 272759 -- the View | Threads selections, including 
View|Threads|All, are enabled for search folders but, for multi-source folders, show a blank thread pane when selected.  For single-source, selecting a Threads item causes the same issue as described here -- all the messages from that source are displayed.

I'm also seeing that when a view adjustment is made to the single-source search folder that causes all the messages from the source to be used, then that view ends up sticking to the source folder.  This is confusing UI.

Comment 16

[Alphax]

(In reply to comment #11)
> if a virtual folder searches over multiple folders, group by sort is disabled.
> In all other situations, it should be enabled. Grouping in a cross-folder
> virtual folder is not trivial to implement because they're both implemented by
> orthogonal view classes.
> 

Threading in a virtual folder which spans multiple folders is something I would very much like to see...

Comment 17

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I also see this in SeaMonkey 1.1.1; so I assume this is really a Core mailnews bug.

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

interesting behavior in version 2.0.0.13pre (20080207) - for quick search on normal folder or saved search folder, group is not disabled. And when group set the quick search results are invalidated, IOW ALL messages of the folder are shown.

Comment 19

[ovidiu]

in version 2.0.0.16 (20080708), 
-not grayed and invalidates (show all) for MV, QS and SS

trunk version 3.0a2 (2008072418)
-not gray and invalidates MV, QS
-saved searches selected group and thread are grayed in menu (at least)

Comment 20

[ovidiu]

this is addressed (assigned ..) in bug 379806