Unable to change order of accounts

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peterthebike
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Unable to change order of accounts

Post by peterthebike »

I have tried to change the order of accounts as in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=56225 but it has not had any effect.

Thunderbird was closed when doing the edit.

Any suggestions please?

Peter

Thunderbird version 0.6+ (20040518)
Windows XP home edition
sboulema
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Joined: May 20th, 2003, 12:34 am
Location: Amstelveen, The Netherlands

Post by sboulema »

peterthebike
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Location: Smallfield, Surrey, England
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Post by peterthebike »

The thread in my message was the one from the hints and tips.
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tanstaafl
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Post by tanstaafl »

See if thunderbird 0.6 has the same problem. If it doesn't have this problem then its probably a problem with your nightly build. I think the 5-18 nightly build also has the bug were the setting for "block remote images in messages" is reversed.
peterthebike
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Location: Smallfield, Surrey, England
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Post by peterthebike »

Just tried 0.6, still does not change the order.
wintogreen
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Joined: October 31st, 2003, 8:38 pm

Post by wintogreen »

Hmm, it works fine for me with the 0.6 milestone build. I'm also on XP.
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CareyB
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Post by CareyB »

I have nine accounts, including the local folders, which I believe is 'account9' and changing the order as per the referenced threads does change the order, but not to what I want, or what seems indicated.
I'm willing to put up with you, if you're willing to put up with me.
peterthebike
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Post by peterthebike »

I have managed to change the order of accounts, but it is only a partial change.

My original planned change, was to bring to the top one of the newer accounts, but leave the existing first account still as the default.

To achieve this I only amended the user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account4,account1,account3,account2"); line and got no change in the displayed order.

I then changed both lines to make the newer account also the default account, as well as being at the top of the display, this worked.

I then tried leaving the line user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account4,account1,account3,account2"); unchanged from my original setting, but amended the line for default account, and this had the same effect of moving the account to the top of the displayed list

So it seems to be only the default account that changes the order? :-k

Meaning that other than changing which is the first account, the order cannot be changed (at least on my PC!).
Old Ausdilecce
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Post by Old Ausdilecce »

Peterthebike,

The default account will *always* appear at the top ( even if you make the 'local folders' account the default ) ..

THEN, the pref for mail.accountmanager.accounts takes over and sorts the *other* accounts ..

if you want those settings to stick even if you add or remove accounts, put those settings in a file called user.js ( its a new file you make in the same folder as prefs.js)

I have successfully changed the order of all of my accounts ( local folders at the top, then impa, then my pop accts ) News accounts will always appear at the bottom. ( can't have it all I guess)
ph7ps
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Joined: May 5th, 2004, 8:53 am

Post by ph7ps »

The rule is that the default account has to be the first in the ordered list (and effectively appear on top of the list).
If that condition is satisfied then the ordering works always.
But you cannot put on top a non-default account.

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account4,account2,account3,account1");
user_pref("mail.accountmanager.defaultaccount", "account4");
this will set the ordering: 4,2,3,1

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account2,account3,account1,account4");
user_pref("mail.accountmanager.defaultaccount", "account2");
this will set the ordering: 2,3,1,4

and so on.

[EDIT]
I did not see in time, the previous post...
peterthebike
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Post by peterthebike »

I now understand why my account order was not changing!

My account3 and account4 are news accounts.
ausdilecce wrote:News accounts will always appear at the bottom.

I was assuming mail.accountmanager.accounts was listing exactly how the accounts were displayed.

To just see how the re-ordering worked, I swapped account2 and account3. As account3 is a news account, nothing changed. I misunderstood this to be the function not working.

Sorry everybody Image

Peter
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CareyB
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Post by CareyB »

I have the answer - for sure!!!!

The account ordering is by the SERVER # and NOT the id#.

When I first set up TB I made just one account. id1 == server1, Local Folders == server2 There's no mail id with the Local Folders, but there is a server id. Later I set up the other accounts.

Code: Select all

user_pref("mail.account.account1.identities", "id1");
user_pref("mail.account.account1.server", "server1");
user_pref("mail.account.account2.server", "server2");
user_pref("mail.account.account3.identities", "id2");
user_pref("mail.account.account3.server", "server3");
user_pref("mail.account.account4.identities", "id3");
user_pref("mail.account.account4.server", "server4");
user_pref("mail.account.account5.identities", "id4");
user_pref("mail.account.account5.server", "server5");
user_pref("mail.account.account6.identities", "id5");
user_pref("mail.account.account6.server", "server6");
user_pref("mail.account.account7.identities", "id6");
user_pref("mail.account.account7.server", "server7");
user_pref("mail.account.account8.identities", "id7");
user_pref("mail.account.account8.server", "server8");
user_pref("mail.account.account9.identities", "id8");
user_pref("mail.account.account9.server", "server9");


See??? server2 has no identity with it. After that you get id2 == server3, id3==server4, and so on.

Code: Select all

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account4,account5,account3,account6,account7,account8,account9,account2");


This works! Then setting server2 as the default brings it to the top. Other than that, Local Folders are always at the bottom. This is why what I was looking at didn't make sense. That is, you can put account2 anywhere in the order, but it can only be top as default, or bottom otherwise. Nice of them to tell us, huh ;)
I'm willing to put up with you, if you're willing to put up with me.
Athaedriel
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Joined: January 13th, 2004, 9:47 pm
Location: United States

Bogus account ordering method

Post by Athaedriel »

Somehow, I don't feel too confident about trying to edit account order by editing:

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2,account3,account5,account6,account7,account8,account9,account10,account11,account12,account13,account14,account16,account17,account18,account19,account20,account21,account22,account23,account24,account25,account26,account28,account29,account31,account32,account33,account34,account35,account36,account37,account38,account39,account40,account41,account42,account43,account44,account45,account47,account48,account49,account50,account51,account52,account53,account54,account55,account58,account59,account4,account30,account46,account56,account60,account61,account62,account63,account64,account65,account15,account27");

Maybe the extension allows 1-click alphabetizing by username?

-l
larkas
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Location: Seattle, WA

Post by larkas »

Athaedriel,

There is an extension to change the order of accounts without editing prefs.js (or user.js) files directly. This extension has been available for ages.

The extension you want is Folderpane Tools. It is avilable for this address:

http://www.chuonthis.com/extensions/folderpane.php

Did you actually look at the dates on this thread? or the link to the Knowledge Base article?
Athaedriel
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Joined: January 13th, 2004, 9:47 pm
Location: United States

Post by Athaedriel »

yes, I did. I haven't had time to install the extension.

The problem with some of these issues being in "extensions", is that each
extension added, slows down the loading of the core product. Since each
extension is stored in a separately named file, it has to go through the
win<x> open process for the name, then seek, on disk to read the extension
(which would usually be 1 read as extensions are usually less than my
allocation-unit size).

If one adds, say 20+ extensions, it is on the same speed order of reading
a 40-fragment file since (under XP), directories can't be defragmented and
it has to read and open each directory entry in sequence followed by the
additional seek& read to actually read in the extension.

This puts me off from loading lots of extensions or loading almost any, as
F-bird already, w/no extensions. takes noticably longer to load that IE. As
well as T-bird taking longer than Outhouse (XP/2002 version).

In both cases my disk is defragmented, but as the extensions for T-bird/F-bird
are all in separate files, the defragmentor process cannot be forced to place
them contiguously and read them in 1-read.

I'd love it, if T-bird & F-bird would construct/compile a "extension cache file",
much as Windows constructs a "Font-cache" file so it can scan for available fonts
w/o having to separately read each font-name from the font-dir. Xft (X-font caching
program on *nix) does similar. But the "birds" could both construct an
extension "cache" file that has all extensions listed in 1 file so all extensions
can be loaded with 1 disk-read (assuming the disk is defrag'ed).

However, this is more than a little bit off the original topic. I've downloaded
the folder re-arranging util and can load it, organize, then unload the extension
each time I need to change the order so as to not incur a load-time penalty
each time I load the SW which could be a "workaround", albeit an inconvenient one.

Thanks for the pointer, though, in case I was clueless about the alternatives...
Helpful pointers are always appreciated whether I know about them or not. :-)

I "should" post this under desired features, but for those using ultra fast disks
and systems with lots of on-chip cache and system memory, this problem is less
noticable, but on a 512Mb max memory laptop running with a "mobile P3" (reduced
cache), and a laptop-power, hard disk, multiple disk reads are noticably more
costly.

Linda
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