Bug 472030

Summary: Retention policy doesn't work on thunderbird when incoming server is IMAP
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: koka xiong <kxiong>
Component: thunderbirdAssignee: Gecko Maintainer <gecko-bugs-nobody>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 8CC: gecko-bugs-nobody, mcanonic, mcepl, mharris
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2008-11-18 22:59:29 UTC Type: ---
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Description koka xiong 2008-11-18 11:55:49 UTC
Description of problem:
Retention policy doesn't work on thunderbird

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
every version,from 1.5.0.12-17.el4 to 2.0.0.16-1.fc9

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Choose Trash by click on it
2.Go to Edit->Folder Properties
3.In the popup window, click tab "Retention Policy"
4.Check option "Delete all but the last $NUMBER messages", set $NUMBER to 2.
5.Click "OK"
  
Actual results:
The message can't be deleted in the trash

Expected results:
The message should can be deleted in the trash

Additional info:
This problem happens when incoming server is set as IMAP mail server,pop3 is ok.

Comment 1 Matěj Cepl 2008-11-18 22:59:29 UTC
You have to run File/Compact Folders to make the policy active for the first time.

NOTABUG

Comment 2 koka xiong 2008-11-19 08:40:07 UTC
Thank you Matej Cepl.I have tried as you tell.But I find one issue:to make the policy active, every time I need to compact Folders,not just for the first time.

Comment 3 Mike A. Harris 2009-06-18 10:04:01 UTC
I chose "File->Compact Folders" in 2.0.0.21 and it does not seem to work, however if I right click directly on the folder with a retention policy and choose the "Compact" option, it causes the folder to flush mail older than the retention timeframe.  I'm not sure if thunderbird will auto-flush mail in that folder afterward or not, or if you have to constantly manually choose "compact".

What is odd is that I have thunderbird also configured to automatically compact mailboxes if 10000 bytes would be saved and that feature does not cause the mail to be flushed either.

Personally, I still consider this a bug because the majority of users who choose to set a retention policy of n days are neither informed that, nor are they likely to guess that they have to perform another action like "compact".  So if it isn't considered a bug per se. then it definitely is a design flaw.  Having said that, it probably belongs in the upstream bugzilla I guess.

Hopefully thunderbird 3 has a more intuitive design that works like one would expect.  :)

Comment 4 Massimo Canonico 2009-12-08 22:01:54 UTC
Well, I think there is something that is not working properly here.

If I can accept to manually compact the folder in order to have my retention policy applied, I can accept the random deletion of my emails.

I have a IMAP account and my "Sent" folder retention policy says:
"Delete all but the last 4920 messages".

The folder is sort by ascending date, so the oldest mail should be the first to be deleted, but when I compact this folder, the email deleted is someone in the middle of my list.

Why? Is it a bug?

In my other POP account, everything perfectly works (to run the retention policy, I just have to jump over the folders, without compacting the folder).

What can I do? I'm using 2.0.0.23 TB, but even in TB3 there is this bug.

Thanks,
 M