297793 - Cannot remove Local Folders account using Account Manager/Settings (having either IMAP or POP account)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Randy Orrison]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

When using Thunderbird with an IMAP server it should be possible to completely
remove Local Folders and ensure that all messages are stored on the server.

This is, IMHO, the main thing preventing Thunderbird being an excellent IMAP
client.  As it is, it is a local mail client that also handles IMAP accounts.

This is the same issue as 110672, but I am reporting it against Thunderbird
because I want it fixed in Thunderbird.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Set up an IMAP account in Thunderbird where you want all messages stored.
Attempt to remove Local Folders in the Account Settings dialog.
Actual Results:  
The Remove Account button is disabled.

Expected Results:  
Allowed me to remove Local Folders.

Comment 1

[zug_treno]

(In reply to comment #0)
> This is the same issue as 110672, but I am reporting it against Thunderbird
> because I want it fixed in Thunderbird.

Thunderbird bug 224969 was marked as a duplicate of bug Suite 110672...

Comment 2

[Randy Orrison]

That explains why I didn't find it when I was searching active bugs.  Is the
Account / Local Folders code shared between the suite and Thunderbird?  If so, I
would happily accept resolving this as a duplicate.  If they're separate bodies
of code, then I'd rather see this bug kept alive until it's fixed in Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

if you use your imap folders exclusively, the only messages that will ever go
into the local folders are the messages that are queued for later delivery. If
you never queue messages for later delivery, you can just collapse the local
folders account.

Are you mainly concerned about the local folders account appearing in the folder
pane? If we had an option to not show the local folders account if none of its
folders contained messages, would that be sufficient? It's possible we could
allow the removal of the local folders account with a big fat warning, but we
wouldn't give you a way to recreate it...

Comment 4

[Randy Orrison]

I am mainly concerned with messages somehow getting into those folders.  This
has a number of drawbacks I can think of at the moment:
First, the user might not be able to find them because they're not in the normal
folder heirarchy (If you do Edit/Find/Search Messages, everywhere isn't an option).
Second, they may not be backed up if site policy is to only back up messages on
the server.
Third, if the user uses a client on a different machine from the local folders,
the messages won't be accessable.  (I access my email with Thunderbird from my
notebook, from my PC at home, and from my PC in my office; and via webmail from
other PCs at home and at work.)

I guess hiding them if there's nothing in them would be a good enough solution,
and would prevent users from manually putting messages into them, but it doesn't
solve the main problem which is that by their existance it is possible for
messages to get into them.  What I really want is to not have those folders, and
to be assured that the program never tries to put messages into them.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 6

[Randy Orrison]

This is, for me, the biggest problem with Thunderbird.  Being able to hide the
Local Folders if there are no messages in them is an acceptable workaround to
actually being able to remove the local folders.  The ideal solution would be to
be able to go into Account Settings, select Local Folders, and click Remove
Account (and, of course, be able to click Add Account to re-create them if they
didn't already exist).  I guess that hiding them is probably a good idea for
now, until any and all instances of code that put messages in local folders
instead of my IMAP store are fixed.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

does ability to remove local folder infringe on the drive to improve offline/online behavior, or other areas?

Comment 8

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

At the very least, a local Unsent Messages folder is likely to still be required, and it should probably be exposed through the UI somehow.

Comment 9

[Randy Orrison]

Why?  Why not have an Unsent Messages folder that's in the IMAP folder hierarchy, and if the connection is down just use it in offline mode. If the SMTP connection comes up, send the message from the offline Unsent Messages folder and move it to the offline Sent folder.  If the IMAP connection comes up without the SMTP connection, write it to the server.  Just the same as you'd do with any other messages when the IMAP server is offline.

(That way if the SMTP never came up on the client where you composed and tried to send the email, you could go to a different client and send it.  Which is the whole point of IMAP - your messages live on the server and are available from any client.)

Following up to Wayne's comment, I'd say that improved offline/online behavior is necessary for the ability to remove the local folders.  But once you've got functional online/offline modes for IMAP folders, with automatic switching, backed by (HIDDEN!) local storage, there should be no need for any visible local folders.

Comment 10

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Randy: good points.  The IMAP work you mention is underway; see bug 436615 and its dependents for details.

Comment 11

[David Ascher (:davida)]

If I'm understanding Randy, he's actually suggesting something else, which is that it at least be possible for unsent messages to be stored in the IMAP server, in those cases when the IMAP server is available but the SMTP server isn't.  

So that would mean:

 * unsent messages local folder is just temp storage until IMAP is available
 * unsent messages on IMAP server are temp storage until SMTP server is available

Comment 12

[Randy Orrison]

I'm requesting (as I did when opening this bug three years ago) the option of completely getting rid of Local Folders, including unsent messages.  If the user has chosen to do this, then the unsent messages folder can and should be placed on the IMAP server.  If the IMAP server is temporarily unavailable, then the standard IMAP offline storage that's used for all other IMAP folders should be used for unsent messages, just as if the folder was on the server.

I don't particularly care what happens when the unsent messages local folder is available (use it, use IMAP, whatever).  My use cases are: a single user using multiple clients on separate PCs who doesn't want ANYTHING stored on the client PC because he then won't have access to it from another client, and an organizational setup where the administrator doesn't want ANYTHING stored locally so that only the server needs to be backed up.  (Obviously if the IMAP server isn't available, then everything has to be stored locally until it can be synced to the server.  Unsent Messages is not a special case.)

Comment 14

[İsmail Dönmez]

Would be nice to have an option for this in about:config.

Comment 15

[jef moskot]

The Local Folders are exceedingly silly as a default.  If you're a POP user, then essentially ALL folders are local.  After the initial configuration, you have one account which is just exactly what you'd expect, and then this other entity which makes no sense.

Setting up one account and getting two profiles should in no way be the default behavior.

Comment 16

[Hugo Osvaldo Barrera]

In the latest version of thunderbird, Local Folders is re-created, even if deleted from prefs.js as described in the Thunderbird FAQ. The severity of this issue has increased.
Not only does it represent a danger of mails ending up there and not being backuped/accesible from elsewhere/etc, but it also adds notable clutter when there's lots of other mails accounts in use.

Comment 17

[Mozilla.org]

The now obsolete MailTweak was able to hide, but not remove, Local Folders.  Does anyone know how it did this?  There are instructions around saying how to edit prefs.ps to remove Local Folders, but I've never seen a method of, simply, hiding them.  How can it be that MailTweak can do this but nobody else can?

Thanks -- Vincent

Comment 18

[John Corliss]

I've been using the "Hide Local Folders" extension to, well, hide the Local Folders "account". Just a little while ago, I was attempting to send an email reply to a friend by didn't notice that my cable modem was powered down. My reply appeared to just vanish into the aether. Then it occurred to me that it might have gone to some folder in that "Local Folders" mess. I disabled the extension and sure enough, there the reply was in the Local Folders "Outbox". Ever since the implementation of "Local Folders" in Thunderbird, I've been struggling for a way to completly disable them. I've never understood why they're necessary, don't understand why there can't simply be an "Outbox" in any email account, POP3 or IMAP, local or remote server. Then I'd know where to look for things. IMO, "Local Folders" is a solution in search of a problem and simply needs to go.

Comment 19

[:aceman]

There are cases in TB where it is beneficial to be sure there is at least the Local folders account where messages can be stored, instead of vanishing into the aether. Maybe e.g. in case you only have a NNTP (News) account.

Anyway, if you want to store your Outbox elsewhere, you can set the preference mail.default_sendlater_uri
to some other folder (e.g. in your main mail account). The default value is mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Unsent%20Messages . The pref can be found in Options->Advanced->General->Config editor