269230 - changing local directories for an account's mail folders

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 81355

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Account Configuration, defect)

Description

[Glenn Linderman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 MultiZilla/1.6.4.0b
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910 MultiZilla/1.6.4.0b

When a different directory is chosen for an account's mail folders, in the
Server Settings -- Local directory, the existing mail folders are not moved to
the newly created location.  This leads to confusion and potential loss of mail,
in attempting to recover from the confusion.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
The mail folders for the account are left in their original location.  New,
blank mail folders are created at the new location.

If the new location is already populated with mail folders, they are used instead.

Expected Results:  
The mail folders for the account are moved to the new location.

If the new location is already populated with mail folders (or perhaps with any
files), the user should be alerted that the new location already contains data;
the user should be presented with the choices below:

1) continue, using the mail folders at the new location, and abandon the mail
folders at the old location
2) abort the operation, and return the "local directory" setting to its original
value

This would make the usual operation intuitive, and give the option for
"revectoring" the mail folders for an account to saved or archived mail folders,
but being explicit about what is happening.

Comment 1

[OstGote!]

Looks like Bug 81355. Duplicate?

Comment 2

[John T]

Is automatic moving of mail a good thing? Or does one want to give the user some
responsibility and control? I've been doing manual things like moving, renaming
folders and backing up mail in a console (dos window) for about 10 years in
Microsoft, Netscape and Mozilla mail. Suppose you reformat and reinstall your
boot partition, and have your mail on another partition. Then you reinstall your
mail program with folders in the default location and reset the location to your
old mailboxes. Do you want the new empty folders to overwrite your real mail?

Comment 3

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

V.Duplicate