640644 - If sending a return receipt fails, there is no way to try again

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Andrew]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Firefox/3.6.15
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110221 Thunderbird/3.1.8

If a sender requests to be notified when the email is read and sending the receipt fails (e.g. because of a dropped connection or misconfigured SMTP settings), there is no way to resend the receipt.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Receive an email requesting a return receipt.
2. Send receipt with bad SMTP settings or no connection.
Actual Results:  
Dialog appears saying that sending a message failed (expected).
Prompt for sending a receipt disappears and there is no way to bring it back or send a receipt through alternate means.

Expected Results:  
Either a pop-up dialog should appear notifying the user that sending the receipt failed (not just a generic SMTP failure notice) and prompt the user to try again or a bar notification should reappear with that message and give the option to try again.

Comment 1

[Lucius Chiaraviglio]

If sending a receipt fails because of a complaint about the return address, Thunderbird 8.0 does have buttons for "Ignore" and "Send Return Receipt" in the message's toolbar, but I haven't tried whether these appear with bad SMTP settings or no connection (the same buttons SHOULD appear in those cases).

Comment 2

[David E. Ross]

Windows 7 Ultimate SP 1 (x64)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.2.1
View > Layout > Wide View
Protocols:  POP3 and SMTP

My primary E-mail account is experiencing server problems.  In sending a message, I often (not always) get an error popup that says either that the SMTP server timed out or that the connection to the SMTP server was lost.  

On receiving an E-mail message, an SMTP failure during the attempt to send a return receipt results in the buttons for sending the receipt to be lost.  Yes, I tried viewing the message in Safe Mode; and the option to send the receipt cannot be found.