394316 - warn the user that deletion of single .eml attachment will cause deletion of attachments for that .eml file too

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Rod Tulloss]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: 

Received an email with mixed types of attachments: .eml, .jpg, etc.
I attempted to delete the first attached file (a .eml file).
All files were deleted and were unrecoverable with my level of knowledge (long time user, but not detailed knowledge other than commonly used functions).
Note that the two eml files attached were in the first and second positions in the attachment list and both had the same subject line.  These were followed by about a half-dozen .jpg files.  The final file was of a type that I did not recognize (and, consequently) I made no attempt to open it.  Those files that I opened prior to the deletion attempt were all and only the .jpg files.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.


Expected Results:  
I would have expected that the single selected file would have been deleted, but others would not have been deleted.

While there was no crash, the data loss was the reason I chose "critical" as the category (below).

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

were the other attachments actually attached to the attached .eml file? If so, that would explain why they were all deleted when you deleted the .eml file.

Comment 2

[Rod Tulloss]

I didn't notice for certain, but that is a very real probability that I did not take into consideration.  In fact, until this moment, I didn't realize that there were layered attachment relationships in attachments.  It is probable that the second .eml file was attached to the first listed .eml file and that all the .jpg files were attached to one of the two .eml files.

Indeed given the displayed text there were multiple forwards involved in the email's history.

I think you have explained the problem.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

we could try to warn users since you're right, it's not at all obvious from the UI...

Comment 4

[Rod Tulloss]

I think that would be very helpful and constructive.

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Updating summary, confirming.

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

This bug involves unexpected dataloss through normal operation, and lost data cannot be retrieved from inside the program (if at all). As David Bienvenu points out in comment 3, there is no straightforward way of telling apart nested attachments from the UI, so this can happen anytime without warning.
--> Critical

Unexpected dataloss that cannot be undone should block a release.
--> Nominating blocking-thunderbird3.1. Unfortunately, I cannot set the ? flag for this.

This is even nastier than my enemy No. 1,
Bug 315144 - Pressing [Shift+]DEL on focused(!) attachment(s) within the mail window deletes message(s) instead of attachment(s)