Sort by subject plus other issues. [Linux.]

[HaydnH]

Hi All,

I've just switched from Outlook on Windows to Thunderbird in Linux for my corporate email client connecting to an Exchange server via davmail using EWS. Currently I'm experiencing a few teething issues which hopefully someone can help with:

1) When sorting mails by subject I would expect "FW: Email Subject" and "Re: Email Subject" to be sorted together, however this isn't the case. I thought this was meant to be the default behavior but apparently not. I've also tried playing with mail.correct_threading and mail.strict_threading in config editor but I can't seem to get the sorting to work as I would expect. How do I fix this?

2) After changing the above settings and experiencing no changes to the sort order I wanted to reindex my inbox to double check if that was the issue of the changes not taking effect. I found a a few suggestions that the only way to do this was to quit thunderbird, remove inbox.msf and restart thunderbird - unfortunately this has had the impact of deleting all my locally stored mails (which took half a week to download in the first place!) and still didn't fix the sorting. What's the correct way to reindex a folder after such a config change? - SOLVED: Use the rebuild button under properties for the folder, thanks Dan.

3) If I sort a folder, is there a way to jump to a part of that sorting? For example, if I sort by "Correspondents", is there a way to type "Smi" to jump to "Smith, John" etc?

4) My account on the server has folders containing slashes (e.g: "FOO/BAA") which Thunderbird seems to treat as two seperate folders ("FOO" & "BAA"), I can't do anything with these folders due to the mismatch. Is there anyway to fix this other than going back to outlook and renaming the folders?

5) We frequently attach documents to meeting invites (e.g: attaching a job seekers CV to an interview meeting), however Thunderbird doesn't seem to support this, I've tried the "Exchange EWS Provider" add on but that doesn't seem to have helped. Is there any solution to this?

Thanks in advance,

Haydn.

[HaydnH]

Actually, on point 1, "Email Subject" and subsequent "Re: Email Subject" mails get sorted correctly, however if the thread contains a "FW: Email Subject" (or "FWD:" alternatives) then the mails will get sorted on "FW" rather than "Email Subject" so won't be grouped together. I've tried setting mailnews.localizedRe to "FW:, FWD:, Fw:" but nothing has changed - perhaps I need to reindex again which requires a response to point 2?

[DanRaisch]

2. How is the account set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP?
To reindex messages without deleting any files, right click on the name of the folder and select "Properties" from the context menu displayed. Then click on the "Repair folder" button on the next dialogue.

[HaydnH]

Thanks Dan, it's IMAP and the rebuild button seems to work fine.

Re: Point 1 again, setting "mailnews.localizedRe" actually works, kind of, however it also changes the "FW:" to a "RE:" in the subject line which isn't desirable.

[DanRaisch]

There are (obviously) differences between Outlook and Thunderbird in the defaults relating to such things. You may be able to deal with that using that setting. To what value did you change it thus far? Did you find this article -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reply_indicators

[HaydnH]

Hi Dan,

Yep, that's one of the many articles I've found, it's a bit of a hack-ish workaround though and definitely not intended for my current issue.

Lets' say my OP above was an email to you, you're a customer support employee for Mozilla and you wish to forward the email to Dave the Dev who specializes in the Thunderbird threading. Dave replies to your mail asking for further info and you reply to Dave again answering his questions. What I would expect Dave's inbox to look like when sorted by subject would be:

<other mails>
FW: My Question - Dan
<RE: My Question - Dave would be in sent folder>
RE: My Question - Dan
<other mails>

However the "FW: " doesn't get ignored, so sorting by subject puts it in the "F" section of the ordering instead of the "M" section with the rest of the "My Question" thread. Surely that's incorrect behaviour?

[tanstaafl]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Stop_threading_by_subject . If you want to stop all threading by Subject set mail.strict_threading true using the config editor. That way it will only use the References/In-Reply-To headers to determine threads.

[HaydnH]

Hi tanstaafl,

mail.strict_threading is already set to true as that's the default. I have double checked the headers and I have the following mails in my inbox:

Mail A:
- Subject: FW: Some Subject
- Message ID= abc123

Mail B:
- Subject: Re: Some Subject
- In reply to= abc123
- References 1, 2, 3, foo, abc123, baa

And no matter what combination of mail.thread_without_re, mail.strict_threading & mail.correct_threading settings I use the "FW" message ends up being sorted under "F" rather than "S" for the actual subject "Some Subject". This does not happen for mails that are replies, i.e: "Re: Some Subject" correctly gets sorted under "S" rather than "R".

NOTE: When viewed in "threaded" mode (View -> Sort by -> Threaded) the FW mail is in the correct place in the correct thread, so it's *threaded* correctly, however sorting by subject in unthreaded mode shows inconsistent behavior between "Subject" (Sorted under S), "Re: Subject" (Sorted under S) and "FW: Subject" (Sorted under F) - this has to be a bug? Surely that can't be by design? Perhaps someone could confirm the behavior I'm seeing (Tbird 52.6.0 64bit Linux)?