Open Bug 741236 Opened 12 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Edit -> Select -> All Junk Messages

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

11 Branch
x86
All
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: erco, Unassigned)

Details

(Whiteboard: [addon idea][wontfix?])

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.2
Build ID: 20120215223356

Steps to reproduce:

Hit Edit -> Select in the main menu, expecting to find a way to select all junk messages.


Actual results:

Didn't find it


Expected results:

There should really be an "Edit->Select->All junk messages".

I'm aware I can change my sort settings to sort by junk status, scroll to the top, highlight, scroll to the bottom, hit Shift-click, do the operation, and change my sort settings back, and scroll back to where I was. I'm also aware I can set up a mail filter to auto-remove junk messages.

If there's another way to do this, that's fine.
Just sayin: "Select -> All junk" seems like it would make a lot of sense.
Version: 6 → 11
Tools -> Delete mail mark as Junk in folder ?
Severity: normal → enhancement
Component: General → Mail Window Front End
QA Contact: general → front-end
why wouldl you want this, when you have available
 tools | Delete mail marked as junk
> Why would you want this

For all the reasons you'd want to select messages before doing an operation en masse,
such as move, delete, mark read, tag, copy, etc.

It's a common, intuitive operational pattern to 1) select, 2) operate on selection.

It would seem to make sense the Edit -> Select -> submenu had options
for any of the boolean message attributes ('All unread', 'All tagged', 'All Junk', etc)
Makes it easy to then do all the operations one can do with selected messages.

Tools -> Delete mail mark as junk is a good thing.. for deleting.
But if you want to keep your junk in a special folder for later sifting
to check for valid msgs mistaken for junk, and have it be separate from the
messages you manually delete.
Menu items should be commonly used. And I really doubt many users do anything en-mass other than delete their junk mail. Unless they have their junk mail not in a junk folder and mixed in with other messages - which I also doubt is common.

This is trivial to accomplish with a customized View drop down - "junk status is"...

I think for reasons stated above that this would never be accepted in the mainstream UI.  It would however be good candidate for a junk mail addon.
OS: Linux → All
Whiteboard: [addon idea][wontfix?]
"Commonly used" is subjective; you don't know you need it until you need it.

And AFAIK, menu items are the /only/ way to access advanced features.
Novices stick with toolbars.

Thunderbird has already got an Edit -> Select menu that lets one select
"Starred messages" and "Threads".. why stop there? Why not have a way to select
all Tagged, Unread, Junk, etc.. If for no other reason than to be as complete
as the View->Sort By menu is?

It wouldn't be bad to have an Edit>Select>Invert Selection as well.. that sometimes
comes in handy when you want to select everything except what is currently selected.
(e.g. select all Un-Starred messages..)

Perhaps it's only rare situations this is needed, but man does it hurt when you're
about to hop on a plane, and 500 messages all come in since the night before, and you
need to quickly pick through the messages manually, or have to change your sorting
to get the messages together so you can do a range selction/Move, then have to
switch sorting/threading back the way it was. Do that a few times, and one starts to
wish there was an easier way.

Anyway, feel free to mark as won't fix.. it's just a pain is all.

If you're trying to keep menus like Select 'simple', then perhaps an 'Advanced Menu'
flag, so that a user can quickly enable the full range of menu selections. But honestly,
novice users who would be easily confused by complexity won't find themselves in the
Edit>Select menu.. Those folks usually use the toolbar, and maybe File>Print and Edit>Copy.

FWIW, I run a company and often handle sales, and where I run into the need for this
is when I'm on the road operating in "combat mode" with an available portable at the
last minute with a fresh install of Thunderbird, and not my work machine with all the
carefully configured mail filters and addons.

Often new customer's emails get marked
as junk because the junk filter hasn't been trained for them, so message management
becomes hectic.. such as when doing a last mail check before hopping on a plane, where
90% of the new messages are marked as spam, 3% important messages, and I quickly need
to move all the uncofirmed spam into an 'Unconfirmed' folder so I can quickly
reply to the important messages, then sort out the spam later on the plane. Rinse, repeat
for the hotel room, before meeting a customer, or when moving from location to location.

Anyway, just sayin. And I probably represent a lot of people that work on the road
and end up with similar needs.. folks like myself don't usually report bugs or RFEs,
they just hope software does what they need, and struggle when it doesn't, and never
have time for dev feedback.

Love the software anyway.. I've been using it since ~2000.. much better than elm! :D
Severity: normal → S3
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