918962 - Some folders should be ignored when counting "unread mail" in an account

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Vincent (caméléon)]

Displaying number of unread email near to the account name is a new TB24 feature (see bug 235956 ).
However, it a serious gap. In my opinion, it should not count unread message in the Trash and Junk folders, because it make you think you got new message whereas it is just a spam... Quite boring.

The case of some special gmail folders (All mail for instance) should also be taken into account but maybe in another bug report?

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

All Mail is indeed a bit special.
But I don't think at least Trash is a problem. Why would you have unread in trash, if it's not that you manually marked it as such. With Spam, well, it might be a matter of taste - if you don't want to ever check your spam folder there is already an option to mark spam as read (for tb junk filtering).

Comment 3

[Vincent (caméléon)]

I have quite often unread mail in both Trash and Junk folders. Most of my junk are filtered by my server, so they are directly saved in the Junk folder, without any Thunderbird's action. Then when I empty the Junk folder, all the unread junks go to the trash.

Another common use case is that I delete my mail before it has the time to be marked as read (I have a 5s delay). So they also go to the trash with unread status.

Comment 4

[Matthias Schoettle]

There seems to be a discrepancy between the different unread counts (dock icon and account name):
When the overall unread count is displayed on the dock icon in Mac OS, the number shows the unread messages without Trash, Junk and All Mail (it also doesn't count folder/subfolders, though). 
... Actually, it only counts the inbox it seems.

Not sure if they are intended to be different.

Comment 5

[Lawoso]

Just wanted to submit a new bug about this then I came across this one. Which seems related to what I was about to submit.

Today after updating to TB24 in windows 7, my inbox was showing 1 unread message, even though there was no unread message. At least, not in my inbox. After hours of frustration I found out that I had 1 unread draft for that e-mail account. When I marked that draft as read the unread messages count of my inbox was no longer 1. When I mark a message in another folder (drafts, trash, ...) as unread, the unread messages count on my inbox increases.

When I use the Unified folders view I see the following folder structure:

A) + Inbox
B) ++ [e-mail]
C) ++ [e-mail]
D) + Concepts
E) ++ [e-mail]
F) ++ [e-mail]
G) + Sent
H) ++ [e-mail]
I) ++ [e-mail]
etc.

If there is an unread message in (for example) E) then I would expect:
- The unread messages count of D) and E) to reflect that.
What happens instead:
- The unread messages count of B) and E) are increased.

This is totally confusing. Because you are notified of (1) unread message in the (bold-printed) inbox folder for that account. But when you look in it, there is no unread message to be found.

When I switch to view>folders>All, the folder structure changes to:
W) + [e-mail]
X) ++ Inbox
Y) +++ Concepts
Z) +++ Sent
etc. and similar for all other accounts.

Notice here that all those other folders are displayed as subfolders of inbox!! Why?? Could this have something to do with the bug I mentioned? Note though is that marking a message in Y) as unread in this viewing mode only leads to an increased unread messages count in Y), not in X). Which is fine, but when switching back to the unified view, there is an unread message count for B) and E) as described above.

Comment 6

[Tony Birnseth]

I hate this new feature.  I have my favorites shown and do not want the parent folder to show unread messages for its children.  It was fine the way it was and was much less confusing.

Now, my Inbox new message count accumulates all the unread messages in sub-folders that were placed their by filters.

I'd definitely prefer that it return to the previous behavior where each folder has its own unread count and that is NOT reflected in the parent.

Comment 7

[Lawoso]

The most confusing/annoying thing for me is that in the unified folders view, the concepts folder of an email address is NOT even a child of the inbox folder of that e-mail address. But the message count of the inbox folder DOES also accumulate the unread messages in the concepts folder. So as soon as I'm replying to an email, a concept is created and the unread messages count of my inbox increases, which makes me think I received an e-mail. 

If it really would be counting only sub-folders, then it would be much less of an issue for me.

Comment 8

[Oconnell]

Is there a solution for this bug via a plugin?
I use Thunderbird to read out my Gmail. It displays that I have 21 unread messages and in fact there are only 7 unread messages.

7 Inbox items
7 Items in the folder All mail
7 Items in the folder important

Is it possible to count only the emails in the ‘All Mail folder’ from gmail?

Comment 9

[Matthias Schoettle]

Where do you see 21 unread messages? In the dock icon badge?

Comment 10

[Oconnell]

when I collapse the tree [e-mail] (21)