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Bug 639372 - Please suggest adding sender's email to mails only containing BCC recipients
Please suggest adding sender's email to mails only containing BCC recipients
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Mailer
2.30.x (obsolete)
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: evolution-mail-maintainers
Evolution QA team
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-01-12 21:56 UTC by David Ayers
Modified: 2013-11-06 18:30 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description David Ayers 2011-01-12 21:56:22 UTC 
This is a feature request.
Some versions of Outlook misinterpret mails with only BCC recipients.

Mails sent which merely contain BCC entries can be parsed by:
Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3664
but not for example Outlook version:
Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
which does not decode these mails correctly.

The the raw MIME format including all the headers are presented.
I'm not sure whether the To header must contain a valid address,

Evolution warns about an empty To: header invoking an Apparently-To: header on some systems revealing the BCC recipients. Maybe a suggestion and easy one-click option to add the sender as the To: recipient would be a nice feature.

Even though the this might be a bug in Outlook, to users it seems like an issue in our Free Software implementations.
Comment 1 André Klapper 2011-01-13 16:10:39 UTC 
2.28 is not supported anymore. Does this still happen in a recent version, like 2.32, and what are the exact steps to reproduce?
Comment 2 David Ayers 2011-01-13 16:29:26 UTC 
I still have to test 2.32 so let me get back to that, but I can reproduce it with 2.30.3.

I do get that nice warning about the Apparently-To: header which should have most people add a valid recipient and workaround the issue.  And I think this is maybe simply an Outlook bug /if/ the generated header legal.  So the question is, is:

To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

valid with respect to eMail RFC's (if an official standard exists).
If it is and should be correctly processed by mail clients, then this is a simple request to augment the warning that some buggy but wide spread mail clients my misinterpreting mails without an a recipient.

If it is not a valid header then I think it would be wise to treat this as a bug follow the guideline in being lenient in what we accept but being strict in what we produce and require a recipient. 

I'll get back to you once I can test on 2.32.1 on Natty...
Comment 3 David Ayers 2011-01-21 15:30:36 UTC 
OK I can confirm the same behavoir on Natty now. i.e. Version 2.32.1 and yes, I do get the warning about the Apparently-To: headers.  I'd like augment that warning with a warning of wide spread email clients not being able to interpret headers with empty (generated) To: headers and a suggestion to add the sender as the recipient before sending.
Comment 4 David Ayers 2013-11-06 18:30:28 UTC 
The requested suggestion seems to have been implemented!  I have confirmed this in version 3.2.3.

Thank you!