360932 - Ability to sort threads by most recent mail in the thread

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 254159

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Pilluli]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)

I would like to add the ability to sort threads by the most recent mail in the thread. Right now it seems that threads sorted by either "date" or "order received" only uses the first mail in the thread and not the most recent. 

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

When threads are sorted by date, we do sort by the most recent message in the thread...I thought this was in 1.5.

Comment 2

[Pilluli]

Well, it does not seem to work here, I've tested both 1.5.0.7 and 2.0 beta 1 (20061115 build) and both do search by date using the first message in the thread. I've got thunderview configured so in the Menu "View/Sort by" the following items are checked: "Order Received","Descending" and "Threaded" but when I received a new mail in a thread it does not get sorted into the first position (as expected).

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

I believe you need to have your threads sorted by date, not order received, in order for this to work.

Comment 4

[Pilluli]

Ok, I've looked at this with more detail, my experiences with Thunderbird beta 1 in my machine are:

1. If sorted by "date,thread,descending", threads get sorted using the most recent mail in the thread (as you already said) *BUT* this sorting does not get updated when receiving new mail so even though the non-read mail is newer the thread does not get pushed into the first one on the list. You have to manually go to the "View/Sort by" menu to re-sort the threads.

2. If sorted by "order received,thread,descending", threads get sorted using the order received in first mail in the thread and not the most recent (which I guess is not very intuitive).

Can anyone confirm this behavior?

later,

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #4)
> 1. If sorted by "date,thread,descending", threads get sorted using the most
> recent mail in the thread (as you already said) *BUT* this sorting does not
> get updated when receiving new mail so even though the non-read mail is newer
> the thread does not get pushed into the first one on the list. You have to
> manually go to the "View/Sort by" menu to re-sort the threads.

Bug 262319.  Note: if you change the setting of 
  mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads
to False, you can click on column headers to resort without unthreading.


> 2. If sorted by "order received,thread,descending", threads get sorted using
> the order received in first mail in the thread and not the most recent (which
> I guess is not very intuitive).
> 
> Can anyone confirm this behavior?

I don't see behavior (2).

Comment 6

[Ankit Singla]

I've found that if I change folders and then go back to the original folder, then the thread gets moved, but it doesn't move on receipt of the new mail as I expected.

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > [...]
> > 2. If sorted by "order received,thread,descending", threads get sorted using
> > the order received in first mail in the thread and not the most recent
> > (which I guess is not very intuitive).
> > 
> > Can anyone confirm this behavior?
> 
> I don't see behavior (2).

Wow.  I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that.  

Yes, you are correct: By Order Received *does* order threads according to the first item in the thread; only By Date orders according to the most recent item.  That's what the dupe is about.

Sorry for the earlier confusion.