Responding to email removes "Seen" flag away from email.

[shamiv]

The full filename (in the underlying Maildir) of an email I have already seen, ends with an "S" (the "S" of "Seen").

Sometimes (not always) when I use mu4e to reply to an email (that I of course have already seen), the act of responding to the email adds an "R" to the filename (the "R" of "replied") but it takes away this "S" from the filename.

As a result mu4e gives that email an "unread" flag. This is annoying.

I would be happy to explore the underlying elisp, but I can't find which part of the mu4e code adjusts the filename of the underlying mail.

Does anyone recognize this issue? How to approach this?

mu version: 1.11.3 emacs version: 30.0.5 Spacemacs version: v.0.999.0

[djcb]

Checklist says:

• you are running either an 1.8.x/1.10.x release or master (otherwise please upgrade)
• you can reproduce the problem without 3rd party extensions (including Doom/Evil, various extensions etc.)
• you have read all of the above

Can you reproduce with master and without spacemacs (or at least without the mu4e layer)?

[shamiv]

Sorry yes, of course.

Unfortunately the same (sometimes) happens when using mu 1.10.4 and without the mu4e layer.

It's a bit difficult to experiment without Spacemacs, because I am not comfortable enough with the clean Emacs and it only sometimes happens (maybe 1 out of 10 emails).

I will first see if less advanced versions of Emacs make a difference (will try with 28.2).

[shamiv]

Unfortunately, moving to Emacs 28.2 or moving to mu 1.10.3, 1.10.4 or 1.10.5 does not change anything.

I have also made sure that 3rd-party add-ons are off (like mu4e-goodies and mu4e-folding).

The behaviour stays the same: every now and then (let's say for one out of four emails) responding to a message strips that message of its flags, including for instance the "seen" flag (rendering the message "unread"), but also the "flagged" flag (if the message was flagged as important).

I'd be happy to try and figure out how this happens, but I don't really know where to start. Is there a particular .el that deals with the removal and addition of flags, (and/or the renaming of the underlying email files)?

[djcb]

The changing of flags happens in the mu server program, no elisp involved. What I could imagine is that you have multiple copies of that same message, and not all flags are applied to all copies. You can test by not hiding duplicate messages, i.e., by P u in the headers-view.

Also, you could try M-x mu4e-toggle-logging and see what goes on.

(Oh, side-note: replying to an unread message from the headers-view does not mark it as seen)

[djcb]

This has gotten rather stale, closing.

We can reopen with a recipe to reproduce with 1.12.x and without any 3rd party extensions or offlineimap/mbsync etc. active, and see the notes in my previous comment.

Sorry to be so particular here, don't really have time to troubleshoot complicated setups, so need to the see the problem with just the basics.