GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 550769
Evolution: When deleting folders, move these to the trash, instead of deleting irreversibly.
Last modified: 2021-05-19 11:08:26 UTC
Currently in Evolution 2.22.3.1, if I delete an email, it gets moved to the trash, and I can recover it if I change my mind (provided I have not emptied the trash). However, if I delete a folder called X, I get a prompt saying "Really delete X and all of its subfolders? If you delete the folder, all of its contents and its subfolder contents will be deleted permanently." It would be nice to have folders and their subfolders be moved to the trash instead, in the same way as for individual emails.
Trash is a search folder that shows messages marked for deletion. The messages aren't really "moved" anywhere. I don't think IMAP supports the concept of marking folders for deletion. It might be possible to emulate something like this if the contents of the folder being deleted is fully synchronized with the mail server, but even then I'm not sure if it's feasible.
I don't know what the IMAP standard allows or does not allow for directory deletion, but from an end-user perspective, deleting a hierarchy of mail folders on an IMAP server in Outlook (definitely) and Kmail (I think, but I'm not certain) looks like it "moves" the folders into the "Deleted Items" or "Trash" folders. What it's actually doing as far as the IMAP server is concerned, I don't know, but to the end-user it looks like it's keeping the folder hierarchy, and that it can be recovered if the user changes their mind. Would something like this be possible for non-IMAP situations though? E.g. for local MBOX files, in a hierarchy of folders, when deleting a top-level folder, it gives the same dialog box, and the folders do not get moved to the "trash" folder. So would please it be possible for local folder deletion behave in a recoverable way, even if there is some technical restriction/limitation regarding deleting IMAP folders?
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