Things I could do in Outlook Express ...

[Anthony Buckland]

I find some basic operations I was used to in Outlook Express seem
to be out of reach.

1) How do I remove messages I'm through with from my downloads?
Every attempt so far has resulted in my being told that
the messages aren't mine, so I can't get rid of them.
OK, I don't want to destroy the messages, just to get them
out of my view. Is there a way to do this?

2) How do I achieve the equivalent of Outlook Express'
'catch up', which eliminates from consideration all posts
I haven't downloaded? The only option I see so far is to
ignore the surplus posts when the number to download
exceeds my maximum.

Thanks for any responses.

[Mike Easter]

Anthony Buckland wrote:
> I find some basic operations I was used to in Outlook Express seem
> to be out of reach.
>
> 1) How do I remove messages I'm through with from my downloads?

This question lacks the specificity of stating whether you are talking
about news messages you have read or email messages.

> Every attempt so far has resulted in my being told that
> the messages aren't mine, so I can't get rid of them.

For news messages, OE provides no 'get rid of' function for news
messages (which are not yours). You can mark a message as read or you
can mark a thread/conversation as read and you can select a view which
hides the read messages; View/ Current view/ Show all messages, Hide
read messages, Show downloaded messages, Hide Read or Ignored messages.

> OK, I don't want to destroy the messages, just to get them
> out of my view. Is there a way to do this?

To me, the most 'straightforward' (honest, unambiguous) way is to mark
messages as read and hide the read messages. If you want to see the
headers for messages you've read but you also want to hide the headers
for other specified messages, you would need to do it a different way in
both Tbird and OE.

I will leave it to others to describe other ways to manage the problem
in Tbird, which causes (me) confusion with terms like 'delete'.

> 2) How do I achieve the equivalent of Outlook Express'
> 'catch up', which eliminates from consideration all posts
> I haven't downloaded? The only option I see so far is to
> ignore the surplus posts when the number to download
> exceeds my maximum.

In Tb, if you R click a newsgroup, one of the context menu options is to
'Mark Newsgroup as Read'.

In OE, the 'catch up' function is described in the OE Help as "To mark
all messages in a selected newsgroup as read, including messages not yet
downloaded, select the newsgroup in the Folders list. On the Edit menu,
click Catch Up."


--
Mike Easter

[Ron Hunter]

Select the message, or messages, and press 'delete' key.

[Lu Wei]

And before that, go to menu->tools->advanced-> general->config
editor->set "news.allow_delete_with_no_undo" to "true". How deep it is
hidden!

--
Regards,
Lu Wei
PGP key ID: 0x92CCE1EA

[John H Meyers]

On 11/16/2011 5:49 PM, Mike Easter wrote:

> Anthony Buckland wrote:
>> I find some basic operations I was used to in Outlook Express seem
>> to be out of reach.
>>
>> 1) How do I remove messages I'm through with from my downloads?

> For news messages, OE provides no 'get rid of' function for news messages (which are not yours).

Mike apparently assumes that TB Bug 250141 afflicts Outlook Express too,
but it's always actually been confined to TB :)

Mr. Buckland doesn't mean that he can't delete news posts from Outlook Express
(where the "delete" key has always worked splendidly well),
but that he always _could_ do so on OE,
until he started using TB as an OE replacement!

DOWNLOADED news posts ARE "mine" (they are _copies_ stored on _my_ computer),
and the DELETE key deletes them with no trouble at all from Outlook Express.

CANCEL (un-post from the news server) is what you can't do (or should not do)
for messages that you did not post, although the mechanisms for preventing this
range from useful to stupid or non-existent in various clients (and servers).

> To me, the most 'straightforward' (honest, unambiguous) way
> is to mark messages as read and hide the read messages.

As you can see, seven years of persistent TB Bug 250141
have brainwashed even people who are normally very sensible :)

The nature of Bug 250141 is that formerly you could not delete
even your own DOWNLOADED COPIES of news posts (or their headers) from TB,
where you were instead told about the prohibition of CANCELing them,
whereas now the "delete" function is grayed out, so that you STILL
can't delete them, which is of course a great improvement,
in that you are now prevented from even trying :)

The peculiar justification for requiring the user to go through
a severe hazing ritual to find out how to un-gray the "delete" function
is that there is "no undo" if you delete a post (or its headers),
so what TB does, per developers' air-tight logic,
is to ensure instead that there's NO DO !!!
(hey, you need not worry about undoing what you can't even do, is there?)

Ron Hunter also said:

> Select the message, or messages, and press 'delete' key.

Not yet -- there are two prerequisites to making TB act normally:

o Use a sufficiently recent version of TB
(Mr. Buckland's post is via TB 8.0, which ought to be adequate)

o Get the secret info necessary to enable the "delete" function (and key):
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=250141#c42> "Comment 42"

As you can see by subsequent comments to that bug report,
normal users do not consider that bug yet "fixed,"
because most users will never find the "secret,"
and will remain stuck with an indefinite "NO DO" situation,
no better than was the case during the previous seven years.

I have suggested that what would really complete the "fix"
is what you see so many other programs doing -- leave "delete" ENABLED,
cause a pop-up to appear the first time used, asking whether the user
is okay with the "no undo" thing, with a "Do not ask me again" check box
to shut the thing up forever afterwards (the check box should take care of
_automatically_ setting any internal option to remember that the user said OK).

But hey, I'm one of those people who wants the finer things of life
to be available for the masses, whereas TB is meant to be usable
only for the privileged few :)

Where's Mozilla Messaging's headquarters, anyway,
so that we can get an "occupy" thing going down there? ;-)

--

[Ron Hunter]

So, you wanted this problem fixed, and it IS, and now you are
complaining about that?
You can't cancel a message that is not yours, and many servers (this one
included), won't allow users to cancel even their own messages.
However, you CAN delete the message from your sight, so isn't that what
you wanted? I don't understand your problem. Please explain what you
want Mozilla to do in this case.

[Jay]

On Nov 17, 3:48 pm, Ron Hunter <rphun...@charter.net> wrote:

> So, you wanted this problem fixed, and it IS, and now you are
> complaining about that?
> You can't cancel a message that is not yours, and many servers (this one
> included), won't allow users to cancel even their own messages.
> However, you CAN delete the message from your sight, so isn't that what
> you wanted?  I don't understand your problem.  Please explain what you
> want Mozilla to do in this case.

Dunno either but maybe he should just use "mark as read" and be done
with it, no cancel or delete involved.

--
Jay Garcia - www.ufaq.org - Netscape - Firefox - SeaMonkey -
Thunderbird
Mozilla Contribute Coordinator Team - www.mozilla.org/contribute/
Mozilla Mozillian Member - www.mozillians.org
Mozilla Contributor Member - www.mozilla.org/credits/

[robertmiles]

On Nov 17, 3:48 pm, Ron Hunter <rphun...@charter.net> wrote:

> want Mozilla to do in this case.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I've always wanted TB to be able to delete SOME messages from my
sight, such as spam posts, without automatically deleting all the
messages I've read as well. Not to be confused with cancel, because
I very rarely send posts that I want to cancel.

What you've suggested won't do that.