thunderbird
Support yearly/monthly archive folders
Currently using Thunderbird as a desktop MUA, which supports automatically archiving messages into yearly or monthly subdirectories of the primary archive directory. Examples from Thunderbird below.
Yearly archive:
Monthly archive:
Yes, would be great to have this feature.
I would like a button on the bottom line. Up to now there these icons:
- search
- sync
- sort
- new mail
I would like to see a new icon/button to archive the current mail
What can I do make this happen?
I would also need yearly archive subfolders.
@guettli Your requested archive button is already available - I am using it all the time. Please ask in the support mailing list for how to configure it.
You could implement it @guettli. Short of that, it's fairly well described so there's not much more needed.
Complex features are generally developed by a developer who needs the feature. Personally speaking features I want / need is already a long enough list to keep me busy.
As an aside, an archival service would need to be done quite efficiently - we don't have lots of spare CPU time to do this kind of thing.
Personally I also think that replicating every single feature of a desktop application is misguided given we don't have the CPU power and are often in bandwidth constrained enviroments. In general we don't store every e-mail either - a mobile client making server-side searches to work out if stuff needs archiving seems crazy to me.
As an aside, an archival service would need to be done quite efficiently - we don't have lots of spare CPU time to do this kind of thing.
Ah, there seems to be a miscommunication on my part on what is being requested. The feature is a tad simpler than that, it's merely extending the existing Archive command to file the message being archived into an appropriate subfolder of the archive folder, creating it as necessary. It wouldn't touch existant archived files, merely refile messages more intelligently. Consequently, CPU and bandwidth considerations should be minimal merely requiring some additional logic when the user presses the archive button.
A proper automated archival service does seem quite out of scope for a mobile email client.
Oh fair enough. Anyway, the point about developer priority still stands.
It's worth pointing out K-9 currently can't create folders, which would seem to be a good first step.
Yes creating folders is needed for this feature.
Why can't K9 create IMAP folders?
Is this difficult?
I don't think so - it's just never been a demand I guess. It looks fairly straightforward: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#page-34
I'll create a separate issue for managing IMAP folders.
Given the huge leg work necessary to support folders creating, would it be possible to add an experimental version that only supports archiving into an existing folder?
If the folder doesn't exist the user will have to create it manually through Thunderbird or some other interface.
This manual folder creating must be done once a year and is much less taxing/annoying than having to do Refile > Move > Select folder for every single email.
For me personally this would make managing emails a breeze because for now it's such a pain to move each email manually.
If this doesn't work my last resort will be switching to a flat archives structure.
What do you guys think?
K-9 Mail already offers a quick way to archive messages. The "Archive" action is located in the "Refile" menu when viewing a message. It can be promoted to a first level action under 'General settings > Display > Visible message actions'. See also: https://k9mail.app/documentation/settings/global#visible-message-actions
We use this issue tracker to track bugs and feature requests, not for support issues. In the future please use the mailing list for that.
@cketti the initial request in this issue was adding the support of archiving by year, which k9-mail doesn't support yet.
This sounds not realizable at the moment so I offered a more practical solution, which was marked "off-topic".
Was it a mistake? If not, what's your take on it?
@Dinduks: Maybe I misunderstood how this feature is supposed to work. Do messages archived today end up in in a 2020-03 folder or does the message's date determine the folder the message is archived into?
In the first case, you can use the regular archive action and change the archive folder used by K-9 Mail each month. In the second case you'll have to wait until such a feature is implemented in K-9 Mail. "Archive into folder when that folder exists" is not a feature, it's a source of frustration and endless support requests. So no, this is not a practical solution.
@cketti Emails would be archived based on the message date just like in Thunderbird (which I suppose one could have an option for based on the current time too incase someone wanted that too). Having archiving functionality without folder creation is still a feature :) just because you say its not doesn't make it so. Basically do you alot of work that will be needed for the feature minus the folder creation. That can be added in later when its there eadily into the existing code. You can put this feature under an experimental section too so users know its not fleshed out exactly yet. Can't believe this has been on the chopping block for half a decade, its such a key feature. Additional features would be ability for custom year/month or heck even day too formats. Allow the user to define a custom string if they wish since Thunderbird for example allows for this through a hidden pref (which an addon can easily change for the end user). Also I don't know the effects on threads off the top of my head. I know the Thunderbird archive function takes this into account from my readings.
I've recently switched to K-9 Mail as my main mail client on Android.
I use the monthly folders archiving feature on Thunderbird on my desktop, and I need this feature to exist in K-9 Mail too.
Without this feature, I have to either wait until I get to my desktop to archive my mails, or if I do archive them from K-9, I have to re-archive them from the Archive(s) folder so they go to the correct monthly folder.
Since we are getting closer to a Thunderbird for Android release, this might be a good time to tackle this feature in order to close the gap between desktop and mobile a bit further 🙂
Tried to implement this here https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android/pull/10113
