288524 - Clicking a message-list column header to sort messages breaks threading

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[bugzilla]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: 

In Thunderbird, when viewing a message list (either mail or news), if a threaded
view is selected and a column header is clicked to use that column to sort, the
new list is unthreaded.  Threaded view should persist across sorts until
explicitly unselected by the user; only the ascending/descending option and the
attribute sorted by should change when clicking on a column.

In fact the View -> Sort by submenu appears to be designed with this correct
behavior in mind; the threading/grouping, ascending/descending, and attribute
criteria have separators between them, but the proper independence is not
preserved with respect to the threading option.

Ultimately sorting by date and then re-enabling threading gives the desired
display, but the extra step is a) annoying and b) time-consuming when dealing
with a list of say, 100,000 USENET messages to be de-threaded and then
re-threaded unnecessarily.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. In Thunderbird, view a message list in threaded mode.
2. Click the Date column header to sort by date.
Actual Results:  
The messages are dethreaded and individually sorted by date.

Expected Results:  
Kept the messages threaded, and sorted the threads by date.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

there's a hidden pref that gives you the behaviour you want:

"mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads"

set it to false in user.js - I believe seamonkey has a ui for this pref, but
tbird does not.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

See bug 234690 comment 14.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 302061 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Vlad Beffa]

Actually, the pref file is mailnews.js, and is located in C:\Program
Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\defaults\pref. Not sure why this isn't stored under
Documents and Settings, but setting it seems to work.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

it is - you just found the default prefs.js - you want the real one, which is
under documents and settings/<user name>application data/thunderbird/<profile dir/

Comment 6

[Vlad Beffa]

The prefs.js in my profile dir doesn't have the
mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads property.

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #6)
> The prefs.js in my profile dir doesn't have the
> mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads property.

Then add one:
  user_pref("mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads", false);

Comment 8

[bugzilla]

I think marking this as RESOLVED - WORKSFORME is premature, unless the default
behavior has now been changed to preserve threading when resorting messages.