GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 208208
ability to disable local folders
Last modified: 2005-02-22 23:02:40 UTC
Package: Evolution Priority: Normal Version: 0.12.99 Synopsis: Feature Request: disable local folders Bugzilla-Product: Evolution Bugzilla-Component: Mailer Description: I never use local folders because all my mail is IMAP. Please allow me to get rid of the local folders altogether. Unknown reporter: dcolling@abyssnet.com, changed to bugbuddy-import@ximian.com.
marking this as a wishlist item
It's a duplicate too.
*** bug 215574 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
attaching this to bug 216725 for tracking purposes, but not bumping from Future to 1.2 for now...
this would be more a shell bug wouldn't it? the mailer doesn't actually manage the local folders.
*** bug 237309 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Now it does.
can't really be done, the outbox must always be a local folder.
It's really a UI issue. Corporate IT people have one mail server, period. IT will want to use folders on the mail server to store drafts, junk, sent, and trash because they must be backed up and accessible from portable computers and remote desktop servers. Therefore all these local folders around (Drafts, Junk, Outbox, Sent, Trash) will never have any messages in them. This will be confusing to the typical corporate user. Evolution is clearly aimed at the corporate user because its comprehensive feature set is nuclear winter overkill for the typical home email user. I understand the point about the Outbox folder but Outbox isn't really a mail folder like the others, is it? I mean, you can't store mail in there like any of the others. You can't read any mail out of it either unless something is broken. Maybe it should be a special top-level folder that only appears in the UI if there is something in it. That would make sense, actually.
it's a real mail folder. you can store mail in it (tho why you'd do that is beyond me since evo will try to send it) and you can read mail in it. Sent and Drafts also *MUST* be there as fallbacks when remote Sent/Drafts folders are not reachable or if for some other reason cannot be appended to. Inbox MUST also be available these folders will never go away.
Amazingly, somehow crufty old Outlook, which Evolution is obviously modelled on, has managed to solve this problem without having useless and confusing extra folders cluttering up the UI. My Outlook is connected to a single Exchange server and nothing else, just like 99% of the corporate configs of Outlook, and it shows only the Exchange folders. Mind you, it doesn't handle being disconnected from the server very gracefully but, hey, it's Microsoft - it doesn't have to be good to sell well. This really IS a serious UI issue and simply closing this bug won't make it go away.
so... what you are saying is that not handling network outages isn't a concern? e.g. losing mail is A-Okay? you just justified the reason for keeping the local folders there :)
also, fwiw, what you describe is a feature of "Exchange Mode". if you setup Outlook to not talk to Exchange but instead make it talk to an IMAP server, you will have a set of local and remote folders, where Inbox/Sent Items/Drafts/Deleted Items, etc are all in a local tree too same with Mozilla Mail and every other mail client on the planet.