xyz123abcfuck said

Hi people of thunderbird, Because of glitches at remote mail-host (the double-o security swiss cheese calling themselves email provider) sometimes remote mail-host tells Thunderbird that I have an empty IMAP folder and Thunderbird ever so gullibly trusts what the incompetent mail-host tells it and duly starts erasing all thousands of emails I have saved on local disk.

The RFC for IMAP mail is here https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501

I am not aware of anything there that says the IMAP mail server is anything but the authoritative source. Given that for mail to work, the elements must all work within the bounds of the relevant set of rules (RFC) then I suggest you issue is not with Thunderbird working as it should. Despite your feeling otherwise.

If you do not want Thunderbird to startup online and check mail, there are settings for that. There will however not be a setting that causes a popup saying "Your mail provider is rubbish should we ignore what it says"

The check for attachments is optional and can be turned off. Messages without subjects increase the likely hood of having your mail treated as spam by the receiver. It is poor email etiquette as well. I really sometime just do not open messages with out a subject. The content is rarely something I am interested in. But does often contain a phishing attempt however and without the additional check of a subject makes visual detection that much harder.

Finally I suggest you understand that local copies in IMAP are little more than a local cache. They make reading the mail faster because it does not have to be fetched from the server. IMAP local copies are not some sort of backup or immutable copy. You have to create those yourself.

"Local folders are an immutable local copy, in no way connected to a server. What you are calling local copies are IMAP local folders and are subject to the whim of the server admin, including to the extent of automatic deletions, the emptying if trash etc. Anything that is set as a policy on the server will be replicated on Thunderbird, to the point of over riding local Thunderbird retention settings. If you cancel your account then when the server account closes the mail disappears.

Also, most folks these days use a phone to deal with mail. so when four would be a huge update for you, just about everyone else would be fuming at the incessant suggestion that the 200 messages be marked as read and the 50 messages be moved to trash and the 45 messages be added.

If you want your messages local, use POP not IMAP. You gain a local copy, you loose the synchronization of mail between devices. But you obviously do not like synchronization anyway so POP may be the answer for you..

Thank you for your reply.

I consider now this as solved, although I do not feel happy about the way Thunderbird handles it (and I don't of course hold Thunderbird responsible for any problems in how my email stored, not at all). But that's up to the developers of Thunderbird.

the rest may be skipped - it's just my opinions and my way to ask for a Thunderbird feature. It is not aimed at you personally but to the two or three ideas you expressed here which I have heard from many other people. I thank you for the time you took to reply and as I can see from the stats, that was your 16,002nd reply! That's a Contribution, I say.

There is a point in saying that IMAP's local folders being more like a cache. (though some people suggest using this cache for backing up!, see mozilla forum https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1024732).

But I still see a point in asking a user to confirm when their entire inbox is about to be erased locally *which implies btw* that their real copy in the server is most likely ALREADY GONE and Thunderbird is their last chance to save it! Will she save them? No.

These are not concerns of Thunderbird nor the RFC's I hear you say. Well neither is how my emails will be received on the other end or whether they will end up in the spamdump by yet another incompetent spam-detector.

But OK. Now how about adding a feature then? Especially in the case of being sacked by an employer or a server being hacked or shutdown at no notice (remember LAVABIT?) - yes I know it is not of your concern. Wrong. It is! Unless Thunderbird implements a real-time behind-the-scenes incremental backup with option to eliminating quickly "embarassing" emails. (is there a plugin that works and guaranteed to work over upgrades and will not introduce own weird formats?).

Now that would be something I really need rather than mr Bureaucracy patronising me that email I sent has no subject! (yes I hear what you say about spam- bonus idea: let Thunderbird auto-substitute words like 'nigeria' 'ransom' 'lottery' 'manager' or the number 1,000,000 !! for the sake of *evading* the spam-filter Tsar on the receiving end).

BTW it would make an interesting PhD to investigate how all these idiotic little warnings are spread like a virus to virtually all email-clients in zero time and stick there for years. Apropos, the CAPS-LOCK. Still there. (mac, king of innovation, has no '#' key but has a caps-lock key the size of a kit-kat with built-in 25 candelas LED like a 70's disco).

BTW2 it is little idiotiic things like these warnings and popus that dump-down the less-technical people like most grandads etc. And we do not want to dump-them-down, do we? It's not that some people exist below the average IQ. No i don't think so, it's more like: let's create millions of *consistent* bozos via blindingly obvious warnings, then our work will be easier. In fact consider this my RFC.

Why create Thunderbird when there is already a multitude of other applications doing exactly the same job and following exactly and to the letter the latest RFCs? In fact I felt much happier when using PINE 25 years ago than using any of the "modern" email-clients. And the reason is not because it warned me when I sent subject-less emails.

Implementing a popup (or a perfect behind-the-scenes incremental backup as I said) when Thunderbird detects that the remote folder has been erased before erasing it localy is something that I would really want to see in a mail client (as I said, if user declines, then simply abort syncing and let user retry when they are ready, as simple as that, no more logic).

If Thunderbird can not supply this very simple popup then someone else will. I hope s/he is someone from the open-source community. Because this is THE ONE reason why I use Thunderbird in the first place.

The number "4" I used was just a hypothetical number, it's like a 42 'xcept thunder scared my fish away :(

best, a.

xyz123abcfuck said

I do not have time to read all your reply this morning, perhaps after work.

I see you mentions backups. While I use the builtin windows backup... never more than a day behind. The import export tool has a backup that runs to a schedule and backs up Thunderbird profiles. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/