Messages marked as Read in Inbox stay marked as Unread in folders they have (previously) been copied to

[Dudley Brooks]

I have filters set up to copy mail into various folders the moment it
appears in Inbox. This is so that I can always be sure that the message
is in the proper folder, because when I do it by hand I frequently
accidentally put them in the wrong folder

The filters do *not* mark the messages as Read. That's so that the
unread ones will still catch my eye in Inbox.

After reading a message, it is, of course, automatically marked as Read.

[After reading it, I take it out of Inbox. Because I have gmail, I put
it in gmail's All Mail. This is not about getting the message *into*
All Mail; it's about getting it *out of* Inbox. If I had some other
service, I would do something equivalent. The only other place I could
move it to would be its appropriate folder ... but then what would be
the point of a filter?]

Anyway ...

After doing this, the copies in the folders are still marked Unread, And
if the filters tagged them as "Important", "Work", etc., and I remove
those tags after reading, the folder copies of the messages still have
those tags. Also, the folders will be highlighted

If I *look* in those folders to see if I really do have any unread
messages in them, the messages eventually do spontaneously change to
Read and the tags eventually do spontaneously disappear and the folders
do eventually spontaneously get unhighlighted.

This is only an irritation, not a "problem". But it's a time-consuming
one, because I do have to check every highlighted folder -- sometimes
there really *are* unread messages in them.

Any way to make all copies immediately show their true Unread and
untagged state?

[David E. Ross]

when you make a copy, each is treated as a separate message. Only the
copy in your Inbox has been read. The copy in another folder has not
yet been read.

Have you considered using Move instead of Copy?

--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

President Trump claims he is the most open and transparent
President ever. Then why does he refuse to disclose his tax
returns, financial statements, and visitor schedule the way
previous Presidents did?

[Dudley Brooks]

I don't think that this is quite true, because when I look into the
folders where the copy is, the copy's status *spontaneously* changes to
Read. That is, I don't have to actually read it or even click on it.
So it really is Read, but TB merely doesn't display it as such until the
folder is opened.

> Have you considered using Move instead of Copy?

The filters use Apply Filter When: Getting New Mail. If they then used
Move, the messages would no longer be in Inbox, and I'd have to search
through all the folders to find the ones the new messages are in before
I could read them. With Copy, I still see all the messages conveniently
in Inbox.

(If there was an option Apply Filter When: After Reading Mail, *then* I
could use Move.)

[Grant Taylor]

On 5/4/19 1:26 PM, Dudley Brooks wrote:
> This is only an irritation, not a "problem".  But it's a time-consuming
> one, because I do have to check every highlighted folder -- sometimes
> there really *are* unread messages in them.

File -> Offline -> Download/Sync Now (Alt+F, Alt+L, Alt+S) will cause
Thunderbird to sync it's view of the folders.

> Any way to make all copies immediately show their true Unread and
> untagged state?

This sounds like a side effect of the way that traditional (IMAP)
servers and Gmail (which is decidedly non-traditional) interact.

Gmail uses "tags" to add metadata to a single copy of a message. These
tags manifest as and appear to be folders in the traditional sense. Yet
a single message can have multiple tags, thus appear to be in multiple
folders at the same time. (Think something akin to links on unix file
systems.) So when you mark a message as read, any appearance of a
message is marked as read.

Traditional email client's, including Thunderbird, don't have this
concept. They are designed, with the assumption that each message in
each folder is completely independent.

Thankfully Thunderbird, and other IMAP clients, are designed with the
idea that messages may be read by other IMAP clients. So when you go to
the folder, a state is quickly pulled and updates the local display.

I don't know of any way to get around this friction caused by the two
different paradigms. The best that I know of is syncing things.

The sync will cause Thunderbird to go through and update all the read
messages so they don't show as unread. Then you can know which folders
have legitimate unread messages.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Dudley Brooks]

Thanks, Grant!

I did know that TB's folders <=> gmail's tags, and that a "copy" of a
message in two TB folders is really one message with different tags.
But I didn't realize how that fact would affect the display.

That definitely explains the cause of the problem ... uh, irritation.

However, for space reasons, I don't synchronize. So I guess I'll just
have to stick with my manual method ... for now. If I ever start
synchronizing, I will definitely try your suggestion, which certainly
sounds like it will work.

Or ... is there a similar one-step way to synchronize only the headers,
without downloading the body?

[Grant Taylor]

On 5/6/19 9:52 AM, Dudley Brooks wrote:
> Thanks, Grant!

You're welcome.

> I did know that TB's folders <=> gmail's tags, and that a "copy" of a
> message in two TB folders is really one message with different tags. But
> I didn't realize how that fact would affect the display.
>
> That definitely explains the cause of the problem ... uh, irritation.

Some understanding goes a long way to answer why something happens. But
that doesn't make it any less irritating. ;-)

> However, for space reasons, I don't synchronize.  So I guess I'll just
> have to stick with my manual method ... for now.  If I ever start
> synchronizing, I will definitely try your suggestion, which certainly
> sounds like it will work.

Synchronization doesn't mean that files are made available offline. It
primarily means that folder state is synchronized. You have to specify
if you want the folder's made available offline or not.

File -> Offline -> Download/Sync Now (Alt+F, Alt+L, Alt+S) (as far as
what you care about) really does the same thing as clicking on each
folder. It just does it for all folders in one fell swoop so that you
don't have as much of the annoyance.

> Or ... is there a similar one-step way to synchronize only the headers,
> without downloading the body?

I think that's exactly what sync does if the folder is not set for
offline access.

[Tanstaafl]

On 5/6/2019, 11:52:22 AM, Dudley Brooks <dbr...@runforyourlife.org> wrote:
> However, for space reasons, I don't synchronize. So I guess I'll just
> have to stick with my manual method ... for now. If I ever start
> synchronizing, I will definitely try your suggestion, which certainly
> sounds like it will work.

I don't think you have to fully synchronize the emails. If you do like I
do, and only download the headers, then rely on the cache that contains
the full emails when you click on them and it downloads, you could still
sync, and it would only sync the headers - but would include the tags.

[Dudley Brooks]

Before I try this, I want to make sure that *no* message bodies will be
downloaded.

Here are the current settings. These are in Tools -> Account Settings
-> <name of the account(s)> -> Synchronization & Storage:

Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer:
UNCHECKED

Advanced: Choose mail folders and newsgroups for offline usage:
NONE SELECTED

(I don't find any other settings that have to do with synchronization
and/or offline usage.)

Am I safe to try your method, without risking downloading a whole lot of
messages bodies that I don't want to download? Or is there a setting
somewhere else, which I've missed?

Thanks.

[Grant Taylor]

On 5/7/19 8:22 PM, Dudley Brooks wrote:
> Before I try this, I want to make sure that *no* message bodies will be
> downloaded.
>
> Here are the current settings.  These are in Tools -> Account Settings
> -> <name of the account(s)> -> Synchronization & Storage:
>
> Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer:
>     UNCHECKED
>
> Advanced:  Choose mail folders and newsgroups for offline usage:
>     NONE SELECTED
>
> (I don't find any other settings that have to do with synchronization
> and/or offline usage.)

Those settings look good.

You can also get to the setting for each folder by going to the
synchronization tab of the folder properties. (That's where I usually go.)

But your method is more succinct.

> Am I safe to try your method, without risking downloading a whole lot of
> messages bodies that I don't want to download?  Or is there a setting
> somewhere else, which I've missed?

You should be safe.

You can also watch the client. It should go through the folders fairly
quickly (~1 second per folder). If it's spending more time or starts to
say that it's downloading, you can close Thunderbird to stop it.

> Thanks.

You're welcome.

[Dudley Brooks]

When I tried this with no folders selected, absolutely *nothing*
happened -- nothing got synchronized. And I see that the instructions
for Download/Sync say "IF [emphasis mine] you have already selected
folders or newsgroups for offline use you can download and/or synch them
now." So apparently you must have something selected in order to even
begin synching.

So I selected Inbox, since it only has a few messages in it. Then I
clicked download/synch.

Despite the fact that I had UNchecked "keep messages on on this
computer", the body was *still* downloaded, as evidenced by the fact
that I could successfully search on the Body of the message.

But I realized that I had already *looked* at all messages in Inbox, and
to look at them, the body must be downloaded. So I sent a *new* message
and searched it *before* looking at it ... and the Body was still
searchable.

Then I realized that, because I had sent it *from* the same gmail
account I was sending it *to*, presumably they were the same message in
gmail IMAP's eyes, and therefore the Body was already present from when
I sent it. So I sent a new e-mail from a completely unconnected
account, and didn't send it from TB ... and its Body was *still*
searchable before being looked at.

In fact, I tried that once more -- sent an e-mail from an unrelated
account, and didn't even hit download/synch this time ... and its body
was *still* searchable the instant it showed up in Inbox.

So either there is something I am completely misunderstanding, or TB
*is* downloading the body ... without even being prompted to do so.

(BTW, how do I check in the profile to see if the Body is downloaded or
not? Just to check my suspicion that the Body *is* being downloaded.)

[Dudley Brooks]

Ah! I just remembered that you said to watch and see if it said
"Downloading ...". Yes, it *did* say "Downloading ..." -- again,
*despite* the fact that I had unchecked "keep messages on this computer."

So -- again, unless I am completely misunderstanding -- there does not
seem to be any way to only synchronize Headers without downloading the Body.