488063 - "Who" column shows recipient rather than sender under specific circumstances

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Penelope Graveyard :: Mail Window, defect)

Description

[Bob Coleman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: version 8.0b6

If the sender of the email is an email address which is defined in an account in the receiving Eudora/Penelope then "Who" displays the email address of the recipient rather than that of the sender.  Classic Eudora shows the sender under these circumstances. It doesn't matter what email client sends the email.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Define two accounts in Eudora/Penelope.
2. For purposes of clarity here, let's say these accounts have email addresses E1 and E2.
3.  Using any email client anywhere, send an email from E1 to E2.
4.  Receive this email in Eudora/Penelope.
Actual Results:  
In the recipients mailbox, for the received email, the "Who" column will display E2. 

Expected Results:  
I expect the "Who" column to display E1 as it does in classic Eudora.

This apparently incorrect behavior appears to occur only if the sending email address is defined in an account in the receiving Eudora/Penelope.

Comment 1

[Bob Coleman]

This incorrect display status seems to be assigned as the email is being received.  If an email has the status described and then the Penelope extension is disabled, "Who" still displays incorrectly.  

On the other hand for emails sent while Penelope is disabled, the "Who" column displays correctly after Penelope is again enabled.

Furthermore, the described behavior does not occur if Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 is installed and then Penelope 0.5a3 installed into it, but in that case the relevant column is labeled "From" rather than "Who" and does indeed display the sender.

Comment 2

[Dale Wiggins]

I do not see this behavior now and have never seen it when testing -- and much of my testing pretty much involves the same circumstances you describe.

> This incorrect display status seems to be assigned as the email is being
> received.  If an email has the status described and then the Penelope extension
> is disabled, "Who" still displays incorrectly.  

In this instance, I am guessing the mail.useWhoColumn pref is still set to true so the who column behavior is still persisting.

> On the other hand for emails sent while Penelope is disabled, the "Who" column
> displays correctly after Penelope is again enabled.

Are you suggesting that having Penelope enabled or disabled when sending is having an impact on how the messages are displayed after they are received?

> Furthermore, the described behavior does not occur if Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 is
> installed and then Penelope 0.5a3 installed into it, but in that case the
> relevant column is labeled "From" rather than "Who" and does indeed display the
> sender.

So if you install Penelope from our installer you see a different behavior than if you install Thunderbird and then add the Penelope extension?

Comment 3

[Bob Coleman]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I do not see this behavior now and have never seen it when testing -- and much
> of my testing pretty much involves the same circumstances you describe.
> 
> > This incorrect display status seems to be assigned as the email is being
> > received.  If an email has the status described and then the Penelope extension
> > is disabled, "Who" still displays incorrectly.  
> 
> In this instance, I am guessing the mail.useWhoColumn pref is still set to true
> so the who column behavior is still persisting.
> 
> > On the other hand for emails sent while Penelope is disabled, the "Who" column
> > displays correctly after Penelope is again enabled.
> 
> Are you suggesting that having Penelope enabled or disabled when sending is
> having an impact on how the messages are displayed after they are received?

No, (well, not intentionally).  I accidentally typed "sent" where I should have typed "received".  I was trying to suggest that having Penelope enabled or disabled when RECEIVING a message permanently affects how that message is displayed whether or not Penelope is later enabled or disabled while the message is being displayed.

> 
> > Furthermore, the described behavior does not occur if Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 is
> > installed and then Penelope 0.5a3 installed into it, but in that case the
> > relevant column is labeled "From" rather than "Who" and does indeed display the
> > sender.
> 
> So if you install Penelope from our installer you see a different behavior than
> if you install Thunderbird and then add the Penelope extension?

Yes.

Comment 4

[Bob Coleman]

To confirm, I installed Eudora 8.0b6 again (on a system on which neither Penelope nor "new Eudora" had been previously installed).

I didn't import anything.

I defined two Gmail Pop accounts: [e-mail] and [e-mail] (pre-existing accounts on gmail).

I sent a message from [e-mail] to [e-mail].

[e-mail] is displayed in the Who column for this message.

I then defined two non-gmail accounts:  [e-mail] and [e-mail] (pre-existing accounts at carolina.rr.com).

I sent a message from [e-mail] to [e-mail] .

When received this message shows [e-mail] on the Who column.

Comment 5

[noob]

I just installed Eudora 8b6, downloaded my mail, and experienced the same thing that Bob reported.  I have an account set up to be able to send mail for my wife's business when she is unable to do so.  I received a message from her to a third party (I was cc'd).  

The message displayed in my inbox as italicized (as the old Eudora would if I had sent it and transferred it to the inbox).  The name of the to whom the message was sent displayed in the "from" column.

I am running Eudora 8b6 on Mac OS X 10.4.11.

Comment 6

[steveg_va]

I cannot read the comments on this page, but today I just upgraded from Eudora Mac 8.0b6 to 8.0b7.  I am running the new Snow Leopard, Mac OS 10.6.  All of the new messages showed the recipient (me) in the "Who" column instead of the sender.  So, I downgraded back to 8.0b6, and the problem went away.  Even on the same messages that where shown incorrectly in 8.0b6.  

To be a bit more specific, the incorrectly displayed messages had been filtered into different mailboxes under Local Folders, one mailbox (folder) for each of the accounts that were being downloaded.  I think that I saw the sender's name for a very brief instant in the Who field of one of the sub-folders (mailboxes) before the field changed to the recipient name.  So, I suspect that the filtering was the culprit.

--Steve

Comment 7

[syager]

   I upgraded to 8.0b7 today and I got the same problem.  My incoming mail all has my email in the who column.  I am running Windows XP Pro SP2.  I hope this will get looked at.  Thanks.

Comment 8

[Dave Koberstein]

I had the same problem.  Turns out as described in bug 514814 that there are two who columns available - one for the sender and one for the recipient.  Somehow the recipient column is turned on.

In the upper right of the mail window, click on the little rectangle.  Select the other who column.

Kind of annoying because you have to fix it on a mailbox basis.

Comment 9

[syager]

That fixed it Dave.  Thanks for that.  It was quite annoying.  Kinda weird that it has two who columns.

Comment 10

[syager]

Now though when I have messages viewed in tabs, it doesn't close properly.  When I click on the x to close the message, it closes my inbox instead of the message and leaves the message open as the main window.  Then I can't get back to my inbox.  I have to exit Eudora and restart Eudora.  Weird.

Comment 11

[Dave Koberstein]

Yeah - same issue for me.  I had to turn off viewing messages in tabs.  Actually I didn't used to have it that way - the upgrade turned that on.  Seems there's an issue migrating configuration from b6 to b7.

I changed the tab|window in options->advanced->reading&display and then "open messages in".

Comment 13

[syager]

Ya the messages in a tab was not my default either, but was that way after the upgrade to B7.  I kinda liked it in the tab, but now it has that problem of closing the wrong tab down and not being able to get back to the inbox without restarting Eudora.  I am hoping there is a fix, so I can use messages in tabs again.  Thanks for the help so far.

Comment 17

[Katherine Nagel]

I'm seeing the same problem. While I was able to display the other Who column (=Sender) using the column selector as described in Dave Koberstein's comment, it is really annoying to have to do this on every mailbox, especially since the titles of the columns are identical in the selection list. Please, if you can't make Sender the default for mailboxes (as specified in the documentation), at least give us a clue by making the column titles distinctive! Who(S) and Who(R) would be enough.

Thanks.

Comment 19

[[e-mail]]

I have the same problem. Using the second who column doesn't help - it still just displays my name for most of the messages, which is pretty useless. I don't want it looking things up in an address book, I just want to know which email it came from.  

I have Eudora 80b7 on Windows 7 and am very sorry I upgraded from Eudora 7, as this version appears to be a major step backwards. Is it possible to downgrade?

No stationery, no signatures, incorrect and random tagging (and I can't find the tag editor), and manual save of every attachment required (instead of just dumping them in a file I can deal with later). I have been a very heavy Eudora user ever since it was released and am very disappointed.

Comment 20

[John H Meyers]

(In reply to comment #19)
 
> I have Eudora 80b7 on Windows 7 and am very sorry I upgraded from Eudora 7,
> as this version appears to be a major step backwards.

It is a step "sideways," to a new enhanced version of Thunderbird,
having nothing internally common with original Eudora.

> Is it possible to downgrade?

The defaults for each of the original installers (E7 and E8)
have no data or folder or file in common with each other,
any more than installing Thunderbird would have anything in common with E7
(if you have both Thunderbird and E8, however,
then E8 is using the "profile" you already had for Thunderbird)

Therefore, your E7 should ALSO still be as functional, independently,
as it was before installing "Thundora" (as some wit once called it).

Comment 21

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Penelope didn't see any activity in the vcs for the last 8 years, closing.