497560 - Reply to sent item could helpfully send To original recipients

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 699681

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[David Earl]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.21 (20090302)

I note bug report 474448 which explains how Reply on a message received from oneself is a special case. I think a Reply to a message in Sent Items could also usefully be special cased: often I send a message and want to send a follow-up. So I find my sent message and Reply to it. It lists me as the recipient. It would be more useful if it defaulted all the recipients of the original message as the recipients as this is nearly always the intention.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Replies to self are treated differently yes. You're seeing it normally but not in the sent folder? Are you using multiple identities?

Comment 2

[David Earl]

I am, but that's not the issue here.

If I reply to a message in Inbox where I was the sender ('From'), it replies to the original recipient ('To') (good, special case). But if I reply to a message in Sent Items (where, by definition, I am always the sender), it sets me as the recipient, not the original recipient(s) which is the desired behaviour. Similarly, if I Reply All to a message in Sent Items it sends to me with the original recipient(s) cc'd, rather than to the original recipients.

Basically, I'm saying if I reply to a message, I never want to be the recipient by default, however the message is composed.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

It shouldn't matter what folder you're in.
Are the mails in the sent folder you see this with from one of your other identities? (That would make it not work, it's fixed for thunderbird3 however.)

Comment 4

[David Earl]

No, the identity doesn't make any difference. It uses whichever identity I sent it from as both the sender and default recipient when I reply to a message in Sent Items.

As an experiment, I just tried moving a message from Sent Items into Inbox, and it is a problem still there, so it is to do with the message, not the folder.

Here's two headers: this first is one that doesn't work (from Sent Items) and the second one does work (it's from Inbox). (I've replaced the recipients with [e-mail] to protect privacy):

-------------------------------
From - Wed Jun 24 22:27:35 2009
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
X-Mozilla-Keys:                                                                                 
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:27:35 +0100
From: David Earl <[e-mail]>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: X <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ...[snip]...
References: <[e-mail]>
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

...
---------------------------------

From - Tue Jun 23 10:09:38 2009
X-Account-Key: account5
X-UIDL: GmailId1220c5fbb6dc83c6
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:                                                                                 
Delivered-To: [a removed gmail.com address]
Received: by 10.216.52.194 with SMTP id e44cs419845wec;
        Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:08:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.204.52.72 with SMTP id h8mr7068895bkg.30.1245748116344;
        Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:08:36 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: from mailex.atlas.pipex.net (mailex.atlas.pipex.net [194.154.164.64])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 26si14283369fks.31.2009.06.23.02.08.36;
        Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:08:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 194.154.164.64 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [e-mail]) client-ip=194.154.164.64;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 194.154.164.64 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [e-mail]) smtp.mail=[e-mail]
Received: from mail6-ext.atlas.pipex.net ([10.15.20.106] helo=mailex.atlas.pipex.net)
	by mail6.atlas.pipex.net with esmtp (Exim 4.63)
	(envelope-from <[e-mail]>)
	id 1MJ1zY-0002YO-0V
	for [e-mail]; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:36 +0100
Received: from mtaout01-winn.ispmail.ntl.com ([81.103.221.47])
	by mail6.atlas.pipex.net with esmtp (Exim 4.63)
	(envelope-from <[e-mail]>)
	id 1MJ1zT-0002AT-Bc
	for [e-mail]; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:35 +0100
Received: from aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com ([81.103.221.35])
          by mtaout01-winn.ispmail.ntl.com
          (InterMail vM.7.08.04.00 201-2186-134-20080326) with ESMTP
          id <[e-mail]>;
          Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:26 +0100
Received: from postfix.frankieandshadow.com ([81.107.43.247])
          by aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com
          (InterMail vG.2.02.00.01 201-2161-120-102-20060912) with ESMTP
          id <[e-mail]>;
          Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:26 +0100
Received: from [192.168.1.3] (cpc1-cmbg7-0-0-cust1014.cmbg.cable.ntl.com [81.107.43.247])
	by postfix.frankieandshadow.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 98FF9376F6C;
	Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:24 +0100 (BST)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:08:14 +0100
From: David Earl <[e-mail]>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: X <[e-mail]>
Cc: [another address that reaches me]
Subject: Re: ...[snip]...
References: <[e-mail]>
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Cloudmark-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=jIKi0uD_AAAA:8 a=3HOt04A8huQ62zFq9l0A:9 a=HVsZKCgRGNoarnxQHTB7BspoGPgA:4

...

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Can't tell from that, but bug 377998?
You could also try a build from http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/ to see if it has the same problem.

Comment 6

[David Earl]

3.0b2 behaves exactly the same. That beta disabled all my plugins, so it also showed it isn't caused by one of those.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

worksforme Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5pre) Gecko/20091016 Shredder/3.0pre

Reporter, can you try again with latest tb3.0pre?
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/

Comment 8

[David Earl]

This works fine in Thunderbird 3.0 release (sorry not to have been able to test it earlier). The additional "subject, from or recipient" search filter also addresses the problem more generally.

Thank you!

Comment 9

[David Earl]

Ah, no it doesn't. I replied to the wrong bug, sorry.

Reply to a message in the Sent Items folder still replies to me, not the recipient.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091209 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0.1pre

I'm not seeing this on Trunk, and I don't believe this bug is in the release.
On trunk,
- reply on a sent message will reply to to-recipient,
- reply-all will reply to to-and-cc-recipients
- neither replies to myself (the sender)
(which is the behaviour requested by this bug)

Magnus, do you have 3.0 release installed, could you check this?

Comment 11

[David Earl]

Something else I just noticed, which may help:

If the message in Sent Items was sent from a non default identity, a reply shows From: that identity To: that identity (and Reply All adds CC: original recipients)

But if the message was sent from my default identity the reply shows From: one of my other identities (one I rarely use) and To: default identity (with CC: original recipients if Reply All)

HTH

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

David, could you please post your exact version string from Help > About Thunderbird (like I did at beginning of comment 10)?

Comment 13

[David Earl]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

I just updated to 3 today, which is what reminded me to see if this had changed. Also I'm now on Windows 7 (which Windows reports as 6.1 apparently!), but was on XP when I reported the issue originally.

Also, I have 7 accounts set up (not counting RSS and Local Folders), only one of which is reading mail normally. The account I read all my mail from normally has 5 identities set up for it (all the others just have one).

Comment 14

[David Earl]

I am now using 3.0.3, still does it.

Is there anything I can do to help you reproduce this? It happens all the time, every time, completely reproducible for me. Is it perhaps that I haven't made myself clear enough as to what the problem is?

Comment 15

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Just in case, and no offense... have you tried safe mode? (see https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode for more information)

I can't reproduce this either using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.4 ID:20100317103207 (note that it would be a regression from bug 85296).

Note that one of the accounts I tried it on has multiple identities, but all use IMAP.

(In reply to comment #4)
> Here's two headers: this first is one that doesn't work (from Sent Items) and
> the second one does work (it's from Inbox).

Can you attach those as .EML messages to this bug? (File -> Save As -> File)

Comment 16

[David Earl]

Attachment: This received message replies correctly to [e-mail]

Comment 17

[David Earl]

Attachment: This one incorrectly replies to [e-mail] not [e-mail]

Comment 18

[David Earl]

>  have you tried safe mode? 

I didn't know there was such a thing. I have tried it now and the result is identical (i.e. the problem is still there as I described).

> Can you attach those as .EML messages to this bug? (File -> Save As -> File)

That was getting on for a year ago, so those particular messages have long since gone and also I had anonymized them. But it happens consistently, so I've attached two for the purpose. Not that they have anything substantially different from the headers I already posted. The Inbox one is the message as I received it back and behaves correctly, and the Sent is the one from the sent folder that behaves as I described.

Incidentally, I also just tried swapping the two messages over (put the receieved on ito Sent and the one in Sent into Inbox). The messages still behave the same in their new locations, so it is to do with the messages themselves not where they are.

Comment 19

[eli0m-mozilla]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Thunderbird/3.1.4
I can confirm David's issue with TB3.1.4 as well.  I would really like to use the reply from my sent folder but it is as David describes. Works the same in safe mode too...

Comment 20

[Tomas Kuba]

Confirm this is still a bug in Thunderbird 6.0.2 (Windows 7 x86, all mailboxes are POP3)

Seems similar to bug 608465

Comment 21

[David Earl]

As it is more than 2 years since I reported this, I long sincebgave up on it, and now use the automatic BCC so that messages I send come back to me in my inbox having made the round trip to the server, These correctly reply to the original recipient, as noted.

Comment 22

[Chris Papademetrious]

YES, please implement this! I too am used to this from 3.0, and I still bump into this all the time. I often think of something additional to add, and reply to my "Sent" message so that my previous email is properly quoted.

A coworker is also a long-time Thunderbird user, and it irritates him too. Please fix this.

Comment 23

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

It's certainly working for the "normal" case. 
FWIW, Sent folder or not does not make a difference. When you do a reply we check if the recipient email address is the same as one of your identities on that account. To check all identities of all accounts, set the mailnews.reply_to_self_check_all_ident pref to true.

Comment 24

[Chris Papademetrious]

Magnus, you are my hero! This setting did the trick. The reason my case was not a normal case was that I use a filter to transfer all emails from my IMAP account to Local Folders. Since the replies were performed from emails in Local Folders/Sent, it did not see the owner of the IMAP account. Problem solved! This makes my day.

Comment 25

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Glad i could help! :)