511741 - Indicate first use of archive command and Prevent accidental use of Archive command/key. Expose disable.

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Upon launch of TB3 lots of users will be introduced to our excellent new Archive function.  However like many other functions with a single keyboard shortcut this feature can be accidentally discovered (though the other shortcuts don't do this).

bug 476590 has offered one solution to change the shortcut to another key combo, this bug is about notifying the user when they use the archive 'a' keyboard shortcut for the first time such that they don't think their mail was lost forever.

Some obvious options are to use a dialog or notification bar to indicate to the user that their mail has been archived and what new folder location it resides in.

I'm not sure this is blocking but is definitely wanted.

Comment 1

[MrC]

Some requisites from 476590, after the it was WONTFIXED'd.

It would be great if:

  a) one could disable/redefine the 'a' shortcut key
  b) disable the archive feature altogether and hide the Archive folder
(something I, and I'd assume others, who have complex, rich folder structures
already, will never use), and finally 
  c) actually delete w/out complaint or error from TB3 folders under Archives (current has problems deleted any sub-folders).

Comment 2

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Good points.  I think we could investigate a) fairly easily in this bug.  I believe the other items are (at least technically) much more involved and so I'd recommend new bugs for each.  Though I believe c) already has a bug somewhere.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

As a suggestion for a quick implementation of b), maybe define a granularity
of mail.server.{default,server?}.archive_granularity = -1 to disable archiving altogether for an account. That's for people who don't want to archive and thus avoid accidental archiving by hitting the wrong keyboard or header-pane button.

Comment 4

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

I'd prefer a) 
 
My reasoning:
- I'd hate to archive (or rather delete) a message by accidentially hitting A (or DEL to that effect). I often work on Linux where focus follows mouse. Sometimes focus is not obvious or is on the TB window after moving the mouse unintentionally. So keypresses suddenly get rerouted to the TB window and all hell breaks loose.

- The "Move Message Again To" function is assigned to the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+M. If "Archiving" gets a prominent shortcut, I don't see any reason why "Move Again" deserves this awkward two-hands-three-fingers "short"cut.

Comment 5

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

A more general approach is bug #57805

Comment 6

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

reviewed today as part of Get Satisfaction triage:
http://gsfn.us/t/nswy

Perhaps there's a short term solution (3.0.2?) that can reuse an existing help string as well as the long term solution with new strings that Brian is proposing (which I am nominating for 3.1)

Comment 7

[Charles]

There is the 'message_archive_options' extension, which already allows you to reconfigure the 'A' key to require a modifier (like the Shift key)

Comment 8

[Charles]

Not really relevant to this bug, but is it possible to change the location of the Archive root? I don't want it on the IMAP server, I want it on the local PC in the local settings folder (for Windows machines)...

Comment 9

[rsx11m]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (on comment #1) I think we could investigate a) fairly easily in this bug.  I
> believe the other items are (at least technically) much more involved and so
> I'd recommend new bugs for each.

Part (b) for an off switch was filed separately as bug 511741.

Following the GS link in comment #6, the "puzzlement factor" is the main issue (and can't be delegated to an extension for sure). The user's surprise when inadvertently archiving one or multiple messages - "Where did those just go?" - would be best dealt with the suggested first-time pop-up (comment #0), followed by an "I don't want that feature" and/or "not this button please" option.

Comment 10

[rsx11m]

> Part (b) for an off switch was filed separately as bug 511741.
and due to my own puzzlement, that should have pointed to bug 542998 of course.

Comment 11

[Charles]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Some requisites from 476590, after the it was WONTFIXED'd.
> 
> It would be great if:

<snip>

>  b) disable the archive feature altogether and hide the Archive
>  folder (something I, and I'd assume others, who have complex, 
>  rich folder structures already, will never use),

I recently filed bug 542998 to provide an option to completely 
disable Archiving, as well as make it disabled by default (which it absolutely should be).

There were a couple of really bad decisions like this with the TB3 release (ie full offline mode & GLODA enabled by default). I hope the devs are listening to some of the screaming.

Options = good. Shoving new features down everyone's throat just because *you* think it is a good idea = BAD.

Comment 12

[jxf011]

Wow, I just fired up TB3 and saw an archive folder mysteriously under one of my accounts.  The folder has a message I left in the inbox as a reminder, something I do IN EVERYONE OF MY EMAIL ACCOUNTS!!!  TB3's new "feature" breaks my todo/email process and does not currently let me turn it off. :(

Charles Marcus on this thread and bug542998 completely nails this issue.  I'm really surprised that a dev team would impose a mandatory feature like this.  I know I shouldn't complain about a free product that has been worked on for 1000s of hours but it's like a family member screwing up.  It's so upsetting because there's so much love there. :)

Please please please fix this asap.  In the mean time, I have to cope with this messing up my todo/email system or backing out to TB2. (not so hard since I use portable revs).

Thanks for your hard work TB devs; please allow archive folders to be completely disable ASAP.

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

Bryan, do you want to block 3.1 on this? I'll leave it up to you, since it's a UX question.

Comment 14

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

My notes and the UX prio page says that we would actually ship without this, so rejiggering the flags to indicate that.  Targeting at 3.1b2 since this, if this does make 3.1, it needs to be in by string freeze.

Comment 15

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Making use of the new heuristic evaluation keywords. [1]
ux-feedback - "interfaces should provide feedback about their current status. Users should never wonder what state the system is in."

1. http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tJxF8zTuLdEj9pUcxnLAemA&output=html

Comment 16

[Charles]

Still no option to disable archiving...?

Come on guys... how hard can it be to just turn it off?

Comment 17

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

It looks like this bug should be slightly morphed to focus on option a) from comment #1, as well as possibly notifying on first use; bug 542998 handles the implementation of option b), and it looks like option c) is out.

Suggesting rename accordingly, perhaps to `Prevent accidental use of Archive command`.

(Also, target milestone should be updated at some point.)

Comment 18

[Craig]

It would be a fine thing if, finally, an easy way to turn this off were provided. I'd appreciate it, and so would many, many users I'm sure. One-way first use opt-out provision on upgrade install is not sufficient. We need to be able to turn this off (Really, it should be an opt-in feature - as far as I can see, it doesn't relate to the real TB hierarchical folders message storage paradigm. It's just sort of grafted onto the tree with no respect to existing storage hierarchies.) Anyway, thanks very much in advance. Very sorry to criticize - I'm sure someone still thinks this is a great feature. But, sorry again, it is not.

Comment 19

[Craig]

No progress on allowing users to turn this off? 

They're crying the blues over on getsatisfaction.com.

Lost mail, malfs, ruined storage organization.... 

It would be, I'm sure, be very much appreciated if this could be fixed.

Comment 20

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

it's hard to know where this datalossyness is going to get fixed, here or bug 542998. So I'm flagging both.

ATM, getsatisfaction has "74 people have this problem" in a single topic - and I doubt all the topics that request this have been merged into it yet, i.e. http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/how_do_i_disable_archiving_in_thunderbird_3_0

Comment 21

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Since there are probably a lot of people using archives already, should we add a "has_used_archive" pref somewhere for this bug and backport just the backend stuff to 3.1.x? That way the "has_used_archive" pref would be true for people who already use archives, but false for new users. Then experienced users wouldn't be bothered by a popup explaining a thing they already use.

Comment 22

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

I shouldn't be the assignee for these bugs.  Filter against clarkbfilter to delete all these from your emails.

Comment 23

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I think this is the last piece of the puzzle for fixing the "I don't want to accidentally archive emails" problem (bug 542998 and bug 607295 allow users to disable archiving through the UI). We need to come up with a UI for the first-use indication. How about something like so:

+-----------------------------------------------------+
| You just pressed the "A" key, which is used to      |
| archive messages.                                   |
|                                                     |
| [X] Don't tell me about this again                  |
|                                                     |
| [Archive options...] [Disable archiving] [Continue] |
+-----------------------------------------------------+

Comment 24

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

I like that dialog. Do you get an explanation of what archiving is if you press on Archive options ?

Comment 25

[rsx11m]

Looks good, maybe the description should be a little more specific:
"...which is used to move messages to a dedicated Archives folder."

Comment 26

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: Notification bar approach

Dialogs can sometimes be annoying when they get straight in your face, so I made a quick mockup trying a notification bar approach instead.
The "archive messages" link would lead to http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Archived+messages, "Undo" would undo the action (because your finger just slipped) and "archiving options" would go to the account settings (or the planned merged prefs/account thing) where it would be possible to turn archiving on/off.
It would also be neat if the Archive folder text in the sidebar flashed for a second to indicate where the message went.

Comment 27

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #21)
> Since there are probably a lot of people using archives already, should we add
> a "has_used_archive" pref somewhere for this bug and backport just the backend
> stuff to 3.1.x? That way the "has_used_archive" pref would be true for people
> who already use archives, but false for new users. Then experienced users
> wouldn't be bothered by a popup explaining a thing they already use.

If you are suggesting we don't prompt anyone who has used archive, I don't see how we can do that and help enough users.  I've used it and don't want to. So I don't think we can assume used it=wants it.  

Additionally, this might be a good way to introduce existing users to the archive options.

Comment 28

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

My main concern with your proposal, Andreas, is that the notification bar would appear on a message you didn't archive, which seems a little strange.  We could get around that by popping it up before the message is archived, but that is also a little confusing, since notifications don't usually block actions from happening.

The other thing that I'm not sure about is that we kind of lose the "Don't tell me about this again" checkbox.  Were you thinking that we would only show this the first time the user archived a message, and once they hit the "x", it would be gone forever?

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 29

[rsx11m]

While the bar looks more "modern" and follows the trend of not having modal dialogs any more, the main difference is that the comment #26 bar would be presented /after/ the fact, whereas the comment #23 dialog is shown /before/ anything happens. So, the first question to answer would be the timing, where I'd assume that the user may be more comfortable getting the warning before the action occurs rather than to "oops, what just happened?" and finding the "Undo" button, hoping that nothing got screwed up in the process.

The link to the KB article sounds like a good idea to provide more background but would require that the user is connected at that time, thus I'd prefer a self-contained message (instead of or in addition to the link).

Comment 30

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

(In reply to comment #29)
> the main difference is that the comment #26 bar would be
> presented /after/ the fact, whereas the comment #23 dialog is shown /before/
> anything happens. So, the first question to answer would be the timing, where
> I'd assume that the user may be more comfortable getting the warning before the action occurs rather than to "oops, what just happened?"

That's what the original report was about. Indicate rather than Choose what to do. If the bug changed focus, it should be labeled accordingly as comment 17 suggest.
I'm slightly worried about this thing being to verbose and getting in the way of a calm work-flow. Also see. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning/
This is also what gmail does for archiving.
If the bug is about implementing warning however, the dialog is fine (but still a dialog :) ).

Comment 31

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

(In reply to comment #28)
> My main concern with your proposal, Andreas, is that the notification bar would
> appear on a message you didn't archive, which seems a little strange.

Indeed. That would be a bit odd. Moving the view into the archive folder and displaying it on the message would not be ideal either. Displaying it outside the message in the message list view. Maybe...


> The other thing that I'm not sure about is that we kind of lose the "Don't
> tell me about this again" checkbox.  Were you thinking that we would only show this
> the first time the user archived a message, and once they hit the "x", it would be gone forever?

Yes, similar to the behavior of "Remote content" and other notification bars.

Comment 32

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Alternative:  have the info bar show up before archiving, and "upsell" archiving.

  "You have hit the 'a' key, which can be configured to automatically archive messages to an Archive folder, so you don't have to spend time managing folders if you don't want to.  Interesting?' 


     [yes] sounds great, archive & search it is!   [no] nah, I like my folders

   "

Language above deliberately not production-ready, just food for thought.

Comment 33

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

comment 1 brought "user choice" into the scope of this bug. BTW, about 7 working days until string freeze :)

("Undo to the rescue" idea in http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning/ is appealing but a) in this case I don't think that goes far enough and b) is Thunderbird ready to break into that model of UI?)

Comment 34

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Comment on attachment 528851 [details]
Notification bar approach

I like the notification bar better than the dialog, because it's less in the user's way, while still letting them know what happened, and providing undo functionality.

I think we could partially mitigate the strangeness of having an info bar show up on an unrelated message with something like the following text:
You have _archived_ the previous message by pressing the "A" key.     (undo)  (settings)  [x]

(Or maybe:
You have _archived_ the previous message into _Archives/2011/Jan_ by pressing the 'A' key.     (undo)  (settings)  [x]
where the "Archives/2011/Jan" would be a link to the message in the appropriate archive folder, so that the user could click the link, and then drag the message back to where they wanted.)

For the info bar showing up before archiving, I think that is problematic in a couple of ways.  It would be the only info bar that stopped us from doing something that the user asked for, and I think we want to move away from asking the user what to do, and towards letting them undo actions they didn't mean to do (which we already do in this case).  However, if we decided to go with a dialog, upselling the archive feature would definitely be the way to go.  :)

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 35

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Part of the problem is that actually undoing this is hard: if you're archiving for the first time, you're probably going to end up creating new subfolders. "Undo" isn't sufficient here, since it won't delete the newly-created folders. I'd rather not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here, mostly because I don't want to figure out how "undo" works in Thunderbird. ;)

Comment 36

[rsx11m]

Yes, that's what I meant with "nothing got screwed up in the process", recalling that there are some effects an undo effectively won't undo...

Comment 37

[Ben Slade]

My first choice would be to *not* have the "a" key archive an email.  It's too easy to accidentally hit the key.   As a comparison, hitting "d" doesn't delete an email.

But assuming the "a" key will archive email(s), I agree with comment 29 & 23 (to bad I can't vote for comments here).  Ie., when archiving is invoked by hitting the "a" key, it would be good to see a "are you sure?" modal dialog prompt with a "don't show this confirmation prompt again" option.   There should also be a preference to turn keyboard shortcut archive confirmation on/off, in case you change your mind after turning off confirmation.

Note, I don't think there should be any "confirm archiving" dialog if you click on the archive button (or click the Message->Archive pulldown menu) , since there's no confirmation dialog option for deleting emails via the "delete" button (which is more severe).  

While I think there should also be an after-the-fact "x messages archived" status in the window frame, this doesn't exist for deleted messages, so it probably shouldn't be there for archiving messages (for deleting, there is only a transient status message in the window frame which disappears after the operation is over).  Probably a subject for a separate ticket.

Comment 38

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

What should the "Archive options..." button do? Should it open the archive hierarchy dialog for the default identity, or should it open the account settings dialog. The former would let users set the archive hierarchy for all identities, but it doesn't let you change the path to the root folder for archives.

Comment 39

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Not going to block 3.3 on this, especially as we didn't block 3.1. We also have the option to disable archiving now which helps a bit, would be nice to get the design into a patch though.

Comment 40

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

(In reply to comment #38)
> What should the "Archive options..." button do? Should it open the archive
> hierarchy dialog for the default identity, or should it open the account
> settings dialog. The former would let users set the archive hierarchy for
> all identities, but it doesn't let you change the path to the root folder
> for archives.

I think we should open the account settings dialog for that account, since I believe you can get to the archive hierarchy from the account settings, but you can't get to the account settings from the archive hierarchy.

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 41

[Craig]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511741#c18

It would really be nice if a simple way to, at least, turn this off in the general program Options. 

Would it be easier to first get a simpler fix into the distribution, and approach the elaborate interaction refinements later?

Comment 42

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Craig from comment #41)
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511741#c18
> 
> It would really be nice if a simple way to, at least, turn this off in the
> general program Options. 

Already done: Tools (or Edit on Linux) -> Account Settings -> (account) -> Copies & Folders -> uncheck "Keep message archives".

Comment 43

[Craig]

A most definite improvement. Thanks very much for bothering to reply, Jim.

I wish it had been featured in the notification for whichever revision it came with. As of a couple of months ago, over on the user help pages, "93 People have this problem". 

http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/how_do_i_disable_archiving_in_thunderbird_3_0

From the POV of whatever portion of the actual user base those 93 might represent, this is a major fix. I'll go over there and copy paste your instructions. They'll be happy. 

Now all we need is a general "turn this off in all accounts" control, and then prominently feature the fix in the update notification, and hundreds of  thousands of messages will be saved!

Thanks very much for whichever of you folks coded the fix and got it implemented. The users thank you.

Comment 44

[Craig]

Spoke too soon. 

Just turned off "Keep message archives" for each account here on TB6.0, and restarted the program. The "a" key still throws the currently selected message into an Archives folder for the current account. 

On top of that, the just-spawned Archives | 2011 subfolder resists deletion after the message is manually moved back to the Inbox; "The current command did not succeed. The server for account [account name] responded: Folder exists."

Oh well. I'll hold  off on spreading news of  the fix.. Thanks  very much anyway.

Comment 45

[Kevin Ernst]

(In reply to Craig from comment #44)
> On top of that, the just-spawned Archives | 2011 subfolder resists deletion
> after the message is manually moved back to the Inbox; "The current command
> did not succeed. The server for account [account name] responded: Folder
> exists."

This is probably because there's already a "2011" folder in your Trash for that account. I used to run into this all the time because I immediately set mail.server.default.archive_granularity to "0" whenever I created a profile on a new computer, and then I would delete the "2011" folder. Delete that folder from your Trash (*really* delete it), then try again.

And since it was mentioned, I might as well add that the only helpful information I could find on the "archive_granularity" setting (besides bug #486827) was at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes#New_.22Archives.22_Folder. Should probably be included here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Archiving_your_e-mail, so I guess I'll have to fix that.

At this point, someone reading this bug might be interested in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/message-archive-options/

Comment 46

[Craig]

Thanks very much, Kevin. First deleting 2011 from that IMAP account's Trash folder seems to have freed up the Archive|2011 folder for deletion. Yay.

The archive_granularity is interesting. I'm sure that surfacing archive_granularity option controls in the UI will make the current Archives feature more useful for those users who do not make serious use of non-chronological message organization (ie, those who do not use folder based organization). 


If anybody has any information as to when turning off "Keep message archives" will actually stop the "a" key message kidnapper, or any other happy news on how users can foil this, I'd be happy to relay the info back to that rather long lived user help page on getsatisfaction.

Comment 47

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Craig from comment #46)
> The archive_granularity is interesting. I'm sure that surfacing
> archive_granularity option controls in the UI will make the current Archives
> feature more useful for those users who do not make serious use of
> non-chronological message organization (ie, those who do not use folder
> based organization). 

That's also in the UI, in almost the same spot: Tools (or Edit on Linux) -> Account Settings -> (account) -> Copies & Folders -> Archive Options. Note that this is disabled on Gmail accounts, since Gmail's a bit weird.

> If anybody has any information as to when turning off "Keep message
> archives" will actually stop the "a" key message kidnapper, or any other
> happy news on how users can foil this, I'd be happy to relay the info back
> to that rather long lived user help page on getsatisfaction.

This works for me. The only thing I can think of is if you have multiple identities per account. It's possible that could cause an issue; I'm not 100% sure how prefs are inherited for identities. It's also possible that it works fine and you're running into another bug. In any case, this bug isn't the place for this, so you should file a new bug for your issue.

Comment 48

[Craig]

Ah, of course, the "Archive options" button in Acct Settings | [acct name] | Copies & Folders | Message Archives. Very good. Affordance.

I do indeed use the Manage Identities feature, plenty. Yikes, going through the various identities, navigating to the setting (I see it now, Edit | Copies & Folders, etc) for  each one of these, for each of the nine accounts currently implemented locally is a rather ironically labor intensive requirement to disable this computationally implemented feature....

In any case, I just went though the five (or so) identities configured on one account and de-selected the setting. No joy. So, perhaps it's something else.

Comment 49

[Kevin Ernst]

(In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) from comment #47)
> That's also in the UI, in almost the same spot: Tools (or Edit on Linux) ->
> Account Settings -> (account) -> Copies & Folders -> Archive Options. Note
> that this is disabled on Gmail accounts, since Gmail's a bit weird.

Well, I'll be. How about that Thunderbird 6, eh?

I can report success with unchecking the "Keep message archives in:" option, TB 6.0 on Windows. Without restarting Thunderbird, the "Archive" button and the right-click menu option disappear, and pressing "A" (for messages in that account) has no effect. I have three IMAP acounts and one Gmail within my profile, and everything seems to work as advertised, including the option being disabled for the Gmail account. So it seems, Craig, that it's your profile, your version of TB, or your platform.

Might want to invoke [path to thunderbird]/thunderbird -profilemanager to create a fresh profile, for testing. Don't underestimate the magic healing properties of migrating to a clean profile with no other extensions when things get really weird and you can't be bothered to figure out exactly what went awry. And I've seen things get *really* weird between upgrades.

Even though it seems to duplicate part of the UI now available in TB 5 and 6, the "Message Archive Options" extension might still be worth a look, if only as a quick-and-dirty method to prevent accidental triggering of the "Archive" function until there's a solution that works 100% for you to disable it entirely. It seems you can bind "Archive" to a key + modifier (like Shift + A, or Alt + A) using this extension.

Comment 50

[Craig]

Thanks Kevin. Perhaps I'll try a fresh profile as you suggest. And perhaps the extension (I've been kind of reluctant to load an extension to fix this - can't say why, really. Just doesn't seem right. I mean, if  this kind of feature can appear in the base product, what's next? It worries me..)

I'll be archiving/backing up the install with MozBackup before jacking around with the profiles though. It would be great to have something like  this build in to the base product. 

Sorry for the chatty blather here. I figure it's usability or QA feedback. I'll shut up now unless I find something further substantive related to the bug.

Comment 51

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

I might have missed something, but given that this bug is not fixed, I don't understand why http://gsfn.us/t/nswy is currently marked "solved"?

The title of that gs-report says
> How do i disable archiving in thunderbird 3.0? - Will come in Thunderbird 3.3
But no, it hasn't yet come, and it won't ever come in 3.3 as we are way past that.

I suppose we should do this:
1) mark http://gsfn.us/t/nswy as "in progress"
2) remove "will come in 3.3" from the title there

Comment 52

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #51)
> The title of that gs-report says
> > How do i disable archiving in thunderbird 3.0? - Will come in Thunderbird 3.3
> But no, it hasn't yet come, and it won't ever come in 3.3 as we are way past
> that.

That's accurate. As of 5.0 (or the 3.3 alphas), it's been possible to disable archiving in the account settings. This bug is just about asking people what they want to do the first time they hit "A".

Comment 53

[Bart]

Some additional thing to check:

When using Gmail with IMAP, the Archive location is set to "[Gmail]/All Mail". This can be considered OK as Gmail in his web-interface has an 'archive button' that makes messages visible only in the 'All Mail' folder (also check bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543005)
But then a problem emerges for the local folders: they have no setting for their own, so they also use "[Gmail]/All Mail". Effect: Archiving messages that resides in local folders are put in the 'All Mail' folder, and this might not be what the user expects.

Possible fixes I can think of:
- give Local Folders their own location setting
- remove the Archive options (mostly in context menus I think) for local messages
- add a message that states where the messages are moved to (with option to dismiss the message)
- differentiate between archiving and backup

Comment 54

[ivan.perez]

Just accidentally hit archive (key) on a folder with 16000 emails. Never in my life have I used this feature...

Any news on this?

Comment 55

[Eugene Savitsky]

I will donate 25 € is this would be fixed. I often accidentally hit "A", trying to text smth in search box, but the box is not focused.

Comment 56

[ivan.perez]

No trying to make something simple more complex, but is there any way that something could get organized, not just for this bug, but generally for all thunderbird bugs? I'd like to see improvements in other areas too, and I might be able to contribute a little bit as well.

Comment 57

[rb625]

Since Keyconfig does not work in Thunderbird 68, there is no way to remap the evil "A" key to avoid this bug. See https://github.com/trlkly/dorando-keyconfig/issues/30

The web extensions or mail extensions API does not allow mapping keys without ctrl or similar modifier: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/commands#Key_combinations:

Key combinations must consist of 2 or 3 keys:

modifier (mandatory, except for function keys). This can be any of: "Ctrl", "Alt", "Command", or "MacCtrl".
secondary modifier (optional). If supplied, this must be either "Shift" or (for Firefox ≥ 63) any one of "Ctrl", "Alt", "Command", or "MacCtrl". Must not be the modifier already used as the main modifier.
key (mandatory). This can be any one of:
    the letters A–Z
    the numbers 0–9
    the function keys F1–F12
    Comma, Period, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Space, Insert, Delete, Up, Down, Left, Right

Thus, except for patching the source, there is no way to fix this.

This is now an urgent problem as users such as myself who have been using keyconfig to avoid this issue are now exposed to the danger of one inadvertent press of the A key and our mail folders are destroyed.

Related to this bug is the fact that the mail extensions API does not allow keys that have already been assigned to be remapped. It would be very convenient to map "ctrl-R" to ReplyToAll. This will work if an add-on is loaded temporarily, but not if it is installed as an xpi.

Comment 58

[kmilner]

This has been infuriating me for as long as archival has been supported in Thunderbird. I cannot imagine creating such an insidious shortcut which makes your mail disappear with a single accidental keystroke without creating at least an option to disable it. Relying on 3rd part add-ons which often break is not a viable solution.

There absolutely needs to be a way to disable all single key shortcuts via the built in preferences editor. Come one guys, this is ridiculous. I'll donate $50 if you implement this feature (disable ALL single key shortcuts in a way that won't break with future releases).

Comment 59

[erich.minderlein]

I have a similar problem:
I am Constantly hitting ctrl-enter or CTRL-Return, which is sending unfinished mails into the discussion forum without posing a confirmation question.
There in the forum it annoys several hundred persons , which have to delete 5 to 6 mails per my edit session.
Thunderbird now has a huge about:config section and it must be possible to define or redefine keystrokes in this about:config section:
No I will not answer offline and then go online to send.
Yes I will look for another functioning front end.
Regards

Comment 60

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to erich.minderlein from comment #59)

I have a similar problem:
I am Constantly hitting ctrl-enter or CTRL-Return, which is sending unfinished mails into the discussion forum without posing a confirmation question.

Hello Erich, your issue is easy to resolve: There is confirmation for Ctrl+Enter to send, but apparently it has been disabled by someone on your installation by checking [x] Do not show me this dialog box again. Here's how to get it back:
Extras > Options > Compose > General > [x] Confirm when using keyboard shortcut to send message (ensure this option is checked)

Comment 61

[erich.minderlein]

@Thomas.D
Thank you
That did it. I had to uncheck it and then to check it again. Then it worked.
The German text ... once you know what it means, then you know what it means. No Reference to CTRL Return
Do you know what I mean ?

Comment 63

[Hadmut Danisch]

It does not make sense to warn people once about „Nonsense is coming”.

this is highly error prone, and it cannot even be turned off (or at least I did not find a settings entry).

Are you serious? This is a 11 years old bug?

BTW, wasn't it about 11 years ago that a formerly good UI of thunderbird was redesigned and severely worsened? (There's other problems causing malfunction, i.e. shifting buttons around when moving to next mail).

UI became error prone and impractical.

Comment 64

[Brian L. Matthews]

I use Star a lot, so am forever hitting A by accident, so I'd like to see something done here as well. One thing I tried was to set up a shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts (I'm on macOS obviously). The shortcut appears in the menu, and invoking the shortcut does an archive, but A still does as well (I tried a couple of other single key commands and they behave the same way—the shortcut appears in the menu and works, but so does the single key command.) It would be nice if Thunderbird, like every other application I've tried, paid attention to the system settings for shortcuts.

I also wouldn't mind at all an option to turn off the archive feature. It's not something I'll ever use, and once I accidentally archive something, the Archives folder forever appears in the folder list, wasting a line and making it that much more likely I'll have to scroll (particularly with multiple accounts each with their own unused Archives folder) to find the folder I want.

Comment 66

[umbrella_carload898]

Dear Thunderbird team, please give the community a fix. It has been 15 years already!

This is the most painful thing I find with Thunderbird at the moment. The community cannot fix this themselves. People have tried to do so by creating extensions to customize keyboard shortcuts which later got broken by the Thunderbird team.

Please implement a way to customize and override shortcuts, even if it is not user friendly, for example, by modifying a config file. This would make so many power users happy. And it might open up a possibility for someone to create an extension for it without it getting broken every time a major Thunderbird release is out.

Comment 67

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Correcting whiteboard - mail.identity.default.archive_enabled is not a global disable.
The workaround is noted in bug 615957 comment 93 i.e. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tbkeys-lite/

I did not find a posting about this at https://connect.mozilla.org/. And almost nothing in support.

Implement comment 34 / comment 40?