522657 - IMAP account: UI to check all subfolders subfolders of INBOX for new messages

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Nick Y Kuzminyh]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 2.0.0.x

When using multilevel structure of IMAP folders, 
check of new messages is performed properly ONLY for top-level (INBOX) folder (Folder title is marked by BOLD font).
This behavior take place both for Automatic mail retrieval ("Check new messages every 10 minutes" option) and Manual mail retrieval ("Get mail" button).
To check if there are new messages in subfolders, it is necessary MANUALLY click at those folders. It is very inconvenient.
I don't use filtering at client side. Instead, I use sieve filtering at server side (cyrus sieve, cyrus imapd). It is critical for me to get urgent mail from different groups of users selectively.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create subfolder GROUP1 in top level IMAP folder (INBOX).
2. Create subfolder CUST1 in folder GROUP1.
3. Create server-side script (sieve script) that will redirect incoming messages into sub-sub-folder CUST1. 
4. Click at top-level IMAP folder(INBOX) to activate message list of that folder.
5. Using separate account, send message to test account. Verify that message is delivered to sub-sub-folder CUST1.
6. Check new mail ("Get mail" button)
Actual Results:  
No signs of new messages arrived are visible in Thunderbird.
None of the folders INBOX, GROUP1 and CUST2 are marked by bold font.
Unread message counters are zeroed.
No unread mail notification is activated in system tray.

Expected Results:  
INBOX is in bold font, showing "(1)" unread mail.
GROUP1 is in bold font, showing "(1)" unread mail.
CUST1 is in bold font, showing "(1)" unread mail.
Unread mail notification is activated in system tray.

I haven't got this problem with TheBat! mail client (though there are many other problems with TheBat!). 
TheBat! has 6-level setting for subscribed IMAP folders, namely:
1) Don't synchronise; 
2) New Headers Only; 
3) Headers Only;  
4) New headers and text;
5) Headers and text;
6) Full messages.

In TheBat, if I use option (1) "Don't synchronise" I get result identical to behavior of Thunderbird: only top-level of INBOX is synchronised.

Comment 1

[Nick Y Kuzminyh]

This problem doesn't depend on OS platform where imap client Thunderbird lives.
The same take place under Linux.
I'm afraid that in any version of Thunderbird, only top-level folder of INBOX is checked for new mail. This is very quick to check single imap folder for new mail.
Mail checks in TheBat are significantly slower, and status bar shows that all subscribed folders are queried one by one.

Comment 2

[Nick Y Kuzminyh]

It is not acceptable for me to use "Make Folder available offline" setting.
Size of mailbox exceeds 2 Gb, and I read mail from different boxes, some of them have limited memory and low i-net bandwidth.
The same reason limits the use of client-side mail filtering rules: It is not practical to maintain several mail filter sets on several boxes.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

there's a check box in the folder properties dialog that says "check this folder for new messages" - it appears under general information tab of non-inbox folders and causes that folder to be checked as well. There's also a config editor option to check all folders for new messages.

Comment 4

[Andrea]

Wouldn't it be more simple if there could be a GUI option to set instead of going to the config editor?
I have the same "problem" using TB 3.0 RC1 on WinXP Pro SP3, it's very annoying that every time I create a new profile or just add a new mail account, I have to go through all IMAP subfolders to check for new messages.
I think this should definitely be fixed, offering the user a gui-accessible setting

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

have you looked at Set mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new true described in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Checking_for_new_messages_in_other_folders_-_Thunderbird

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

duplicate of any of these https://mzl.la/2S9vjK0 ?

Comment 9

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)

duplicate of any of these https://mzl.la/2S9vjK0 ?

This is hard.

bug 544079, or bug 219214 which is a dupe of bug 91246?