358324 - Where possible, use text of "To:" field to determine initial identity for the "From:" field of reply composition.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 327713

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[MarkJ99]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20060414
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20060414

I have two accounts in Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (20060909) which are both on the same server but with two different usernames.  At my ISP, I have enabled forwarding on the server for one of them so that mail sent to, say USERNAME_A is forwarded to the account under USERNAME_B.   I find this convenient because I only need to maintain junk mail filters on one of them, etc..

When I wish to reply to mail addressed to USERNAME_A, the recipient is indeed shown as USERNAME_A but when I click the "reply" button, the compose window opens with the "From:" field showing USERNAME_B.  

I can select the correct account via the drop down box, but that is a nusience.  I have tried setting ACCOUNT_A as the default account, but that has no effect on this problem.

I don't know if this is a bug report or an RFE, but in any case it would be nice if the default username for the "From:" field of the reply matched the username shown in the "To:" field of the original mailing. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create two accounts (say A and B) in Thunderbird on the same server, and have all mail addressed to "A" forwarded to account "B".
2.  When mail addressed account "A" is received, click "Reply" to compose a reply to the mail addressed to username "A". 
3. There is no "3".  :-)

Actual Results:  
The username shown in the "From:" field in the reply will show the username associated with the account the mail was forwarded to.

Expected Results:  
The "From:" field in the reply should show the username that the mail was addressed "To:".

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Dupe of bug 351403?

Comment 2

[MarkJ99]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Dupe of bug 351403?
Could be; although that report complains about TBird replying with the "default identity".  Here, the "default identity" is not an issue and is irrelevent.  But in both cases TBird is not using the correct identity, the addressee, in the "From:" field of the reply.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> Here, the "default identity" is not an issue and is irrelevent. 

How not?  Do you know what is meant by "default identity"?

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

If I understand you correctly, this would not be a duplicate (it's not about replying to an attached eml message.)

Could you attach an example mail?

Comment 5

[MarkJ99]

Attachment: sample case of email sent to userName_A but fwd'd to userName_B on same server

Both "userName_A" and "userName_B" are my accounts on the same server, with all mail to userName_A being fwd'd by my ISP's server to my account "userName_B".  Although the mail is ADDRESSED to userName_A, TBird uses userName_B in the "from" field when I reply to this message.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Created an attachment (id=244744) [edit]
> sample case of email sent to userName_A but fwd'd to userName_B on same
> server
> 
> Both "userName_A" and "userName_B" are my accounts on the same server, with
> all mail to userName_A being fwd'd by my ISP's server to my account
> "userName_B". 
> Although the mail is ADDRESSED to userName_A, TBird uses userName_B in the
> "from" field when I reply to this message.

(Magnus is right, the dupe I suggested is unrelated.)
 
Note that the message you attached has this header:
  X-Account-Key: account3
That's the item that's used to determine which account received the message, and so which identity is used on reply.

(In reply to comment #0)
> At my ISP, I have enabled forwarding on the server for one of them so that
> mail sent to, say USERNAME_A is forwarded to the account under USERNAME_B.  
> I find this convenient because I only need to maintain junk mail filters on
> one of them, etc..

I assume you mean your own filters; the process of scanning for Junk should work identically for a message going to any account, so long as the account has junk controls enabled.

Thunderbird can handle this case for you, if both accounts are POP.
You set up accounts in TB for both mail accounts on the server, then defer accountA to accountB:
  Account Settings | <accountA> | Server Settings | Advanced
    (x) Inbox for different accoutn [AccountB]
And turn off forwarding at the server.

All new mail received for accountA is placed in the accountB Inbox.  All filters defined for accountB are applied to the mail arriving in accountB's Inbox, regardless of which account it was sent to.  (And filters defined for accountA are applied to accountA messages.)  But the X-Account-Key header is properly maintained according to the actual account the mail was downloaded from, so Reply will work correctly.

Comment 7

[MarkJ99]

> Note that the message you attached has this header:
>   X-Account-Key: account3
> That's the item that's used to determine which account received the message,
> and so which identity is used on reply.

Yes, the identity that received the message is used as the default identity in the reply, instead of the identity the mail was addressed to.  I guess I inadequately explained that, and should have posted the example in the first place.  As the saying goes, "One example is worth a 927 words".

So, it sounds like you're saying that Thunderbird is behaving according to design, and this should be marked "not a bug".  If so, where should I post this as a "request for enhancement"?   Because I think a lot of people when composing a reply would expect that the identity that was in "To" field of the original message would be one used in the "From" of the reply, and would like to have that be an option.
> 
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > At my ISP, I have enabled forwarding on the server for one of them so that
> > mail sent to, say USERNAME_A is forwarded to the account under USERNAME_B.  
> > I find this convenient because I only need to maintain junk mail filters on
> > one of them, etc..
> 
> I assume you mean your own filters; 

No, I don't mean my own Thunderbird filters:  My ISP uses a SPAM detection service and user-customizable algorithms that are quite useful, but also quite painful to set up.   So I just set up one account and forward all my accounts to that one catch-all account.


> Thunderbird can handle this case for you, if both accounts are POP.
> You set up accounts in TB for both mail accounts on the server, then defer
> accountA to accountB:
>   Account Settings | <accountA> | Server Settings | Advanced
>     (x) Inbox for different accoutn [AccountB]
> And turn off forwarding at the server.

This, unfortunately doesn't work for me because I pool all my mail, and so use the "local folders" for mail from all my accounts, so the pull-down menu "Inbox for different account" shows only the option "Local Folders".   But thank you for the suggestion!  If I ever re-jigger how I handle my email, I'll keep it in mind, so I appreciate your taking the time to spell all that out.  



 

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

You could probably make this work the way you want by adding the A email (and others if you want) as an identity for the B account to which A's email get forwarded on the server.

For the record, request for enhancements are tracked as bugs with severity=enhancement.

Comment 9

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #7)
> So, it sounds like you're saying that Thunderbird is behaving according to
> design, and this should be marked "not a bug".  If so, where should I post
> this as a "request for enhancement"?   Because I think a lot of people when
> composing a reply would expect that the identity that was in "To" field of
> the original message would be one used in the "From" of the reply, and would
> like to have that be an option.

True, but for "a lot of people" that's exactly what they get.  There used to be identity-picking based on a text comparison of the To: field, but that gets unwieldy -- there are common cases where the name&address fields are the same among several identities.  The X-Account-Key scheme is simpler and addresses most people's needs.

There are a few RFEs, mostly old, for ways to fine-tune this:
Bug 36482 & bug 264770 are looking to use some sort of filter (user-settable criteria) to set the identity.

Bug 166293 & bug 200872 want to tie the chosen identity to the folder from which you're replying (you'd have to filter mail from one identity to a separate folder)


I think bug 327713 is the same basic problem as this; if you agree, please dupe this over.

Comment 10

[MarkJ99]

This was "Wrong account selected for "From" field when replying to a forwarded email", but changed when I understood things a bit better.

It would be a nice enhancement if Thunderbird would use the "To" field, as it used to do,  to decide which account to use for the default "From:" identity --- in those cases where there's an obvious and unambiguous account match.  If there is no obvious choice, THEN have it fall back to using the X-Account-Key logic.   Not everybody will be happy, but I think a few more might be this way.

Comment 11

[MarkJ99]

(In reply to comment #8)
> You could probably make this work the way you want by adding the A email (and
> others if you want) as an identity for the B account to which A's email get
> forwarded on the server.
The solution suggested by Magnus solved the problem!

Per his suggestion I selected Account_B (my master or "catch all" account),  and selected
View settings for this account --> Manage Identities...-->Add...,
and then added the identity for Account_A to the list of Account_B's multiple identities. 

So now, when I reply to mail addressed to Identity_A, but that was forwarded to and therefore downloaded by Account_B (instead of Account_A),  Thunderbird now offers Identity_A as the default "From:" in the REPLY composition window.   And that, by my definition, is the "correct" behavior.  :-)

I've changed the topic description and changed the severity of this to "enhancement" since clearly Thunderbird is working as it is currently designed.

That is, its my understanding that for multiple POP3 accounts, in the default case Thunderbird 1.5+ actually IGNORES the text in the "To:" field of the original message when selecting the identity to use for the "From:" field when composing a reply to that message.  Instead, it uses the identity associated with the account that downloaded the message; and that information is saved in the message headers at the time of downloading via the X-Account-Key.   Is that about right?

Regarding marking this a duplicate, there are a whole bunch of reports that are similar, like Bug#200872 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200872), Bug#36482 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36482+) and Bug#327713 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327713).  The comment #6 of Bug#264770  (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=264770#c6) is exactly my complaint, although the report as a whole seems to regard a more complex problem.   

But while there are many reports that complain that Thunderbird selected the "wrong" identity for the reply "From:" field, it seems like they all had different notions as to which identity was the "right" identity!.   Looks like this is an issue that has been around a while, and will likely always be around, because clearly you can't make everybody happy.   

However, I want to propose a slight change to the current selection algorithm.  I can see that the X-Account-Key helps immensely in complex situations, and so is an indispensable tool.  But in simple situations, it just seems to complicate things, and confuse some users (like me), who naively expect Thunderbird will, for example, select Account_A as the "From:" identity in a reply if the mail was originally addressed to Account_A, regardless of whether or not it was downloaded by Account_B.   Now, being able to add an identity so that Thunderbird will select the correct identity is great, and solves my problem.  But now, simple things aren't simple.

So, now that understand what is it I wanted way back at the beginning, here's my RFE:

It would be a nice enhancement if Thunderbird would use the "To" field, as it used to do,  to decide which account to use for the default "From:" identity --- in those cases where there's an obvious and unambiguous account match.  If it can't do that, THEN have it fall back to the X-Account-Key logic.   Not everybody will be happy, but I think more might be this way.

My thanks to all (special thanks to Magnus) for all your time and help.  It's much appreciated.

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I think bug 327713 covers your request. -> DUPLICATE

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 327713 ***