GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 713263
Non-Gmail accounts not using Sent Mail folder
Last modified: 2014-01-30 22:05:23 UTC
---- Reported by geary-maint@gnome.bugs 2012-05-02 13:15:00 -0700 ---- Original Redmine bug id: 5188 Original URL: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/5188 Searchable id: yorba-bug-5188 Original author: Laura Khalil Original description: To reproduce: Launch Geary with a Yahoo Mail account Send an email from Geary Notice that the email will reach its recipient, but will never appear in the sent mail folder Related issues: related to geary - Feature #3737: Command continuation and synchronizing literals (Fixed) related to geary - Feature #6902: Immediately display reply / forwarded message in conversa... (Open) duplicated by geary - 6756: mails do not appear in outbox (Duplicate) duplicated by geary - Feature #6634: Specify folder for Sent Mail (Duplicate) duplicated by geary - 6064: Geary does not save sent mail to Sent folder (Duplicate) duplicated by geary - 7632: Sent emails are not saved anywhere (Duplicate) ---- Additional Comments From geary-maint@gnome.bugs 2013-11-17 10:42:00 -0800 ---- ### History #### #1 Updated by Adam Dingle over 1 year ago * **Priority** changed from _Normal_ to _High_ #### #2 Updated by Adam Dingle over 1 year ago * **Assignee** set to _Jim Nelson_ * **Target version** set to _0.2_ #### #3 Updated by Christian Dywan over 1 year ago This issue should perhaps be re-titled "Non-Gmail accounts not using Sent folder" as Gmail is the only server that implicitly stores sent messages - correct me if I'm wrong. Sub-tasks for future optimization could be: BURL<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4468> XCOURIEROUTBOX<http://www.courier-mta.org/imap/INSTALL.html#imapsend> #### #4 Updated by Jim Nelson over 1 year ago One complication is that Yahoo! has "Save a copy of the message in the Sent folder" as a configuration option for their Web interface. Some Yahoo users may not desire this behavior. I don't see any such configuration option in Gmail. But the difference between Yahoo and non-Gmail accounts in general is that Yahoo mail provides a Sent Mail folder, while Dovecot (and others) probably don't, so there's no expectation by the user. That's why I don't think we should rename this ticket. If we want Geary to have a "unified" interface where all servers have a similar look-and-feel, then that's a bit a work for both Yahoo and generic IMAP servers, and should be ticketed separately. #### #5 Updated by Christian Dywan over 1 year ago Not sure what you mean by "Dovecot and others have no Sent folder" - virtually any client uses a Sent folder by default, but short of XLIST there's no surefire way of choosing the right one without user intervention. Assuming Google did their usual testing that's why they don't even make it optional. I guess where I'm coming from there's lots of providers with their own conventions and I didn't really see why Yahoo is more special than Fastmail, GMX or whatever there is. Of course as a "supported use case" it makes sense to focus on Yahoo and I'm not arguing against that. #### #6 Updated by Jim Nelson over 1 year ago * **Subject** changed from _Yahoo Mail sent from Geary does not appear in sent folder_ to _Non-Gmail accounts not using Sent Mail folder_ Done. #### #7 Updated by Adam Dingle about 1 year ago * **Assignee** deleted (<strike>_Jim Nelson_</strike>) #### #8 Updated by Adam Dingle about 1 year ago * **Target version** deleted (<strike>_0.2_</strike>) #### #9 Updated by Jim Nelson 10 months ago * **Category** set to _engine_ * **Status** changed from _Open_ to _5_ * **Resolution** set to _invalid_ After some thought, I feel Sent Mail should not be touched by Geary (or any client). Rather, it should merely display the contents as set by the server. More importantly, Geary at best can only store there its generated copy of the mail message, where the server can store there the full RFC822 message sent to the next MTA (which is what you want to see). Additionally (assuming Geary can store messages at all in a Sent Mail folder), it becomes difficult to determine duplicates if both Geary and the server are storing sent messages. #### #10 Updated by Jim Nelson 10 months ago My last comment doesn't imply this feature is closed for good, rather that from our current outlook it seems like a requirement for a narrow set of setups. If people come to us with common situations where this is desireable, we'll reconsider. #### #11 Updated by Leon Bogaert 10 months ago Thanks for explaining the reason behind closing this ticket. As far as I know _only_ Gmail stores sent emails automatically on a folder on the server. Every other MTA I know of doesn't and can't do that (postfix, sendmail, Exim). So the argument that this would be for a narrow set of setups feels flawed. What you're saying I read as: we're only going to support Gmail? #### #12 Updated by Jim Nelson 10 months ago No, but I do know that Gmail is not the only server that does this. As explained above, Yahoo! does this, but it must be turned on. (I believe this is because your sent mail counts against your total mail storage.) I know that some mail servers out there support this as well, as I've spoken with users who have this with their Dovecot setup and want to be able to point Geary to the folder. As I said, if your setup doesn't support this, I would be curious to hear what software you're using and how it's configured. I have real concerns about storing Geary's version of sent mail on the server. #### #13 Updated by Adam Dingle 10 months ago Note that both Thunderbird and Evolution (and probably other IMAP clients) allow the user to specify a folder on the server where all outgoing mail should be saved. So users of those programs might want this feature if they are migrating to Geary. #### #14 Updated by Jim Nelson 10 months ago As I've stated, I would like to discuss this feature with anyone who actually needs it. The original ticket was based on a false presumption about Yahoo mail. I suspect this is used to be a larger issue that's waned in recent years. I'm also concerned about reliably integrating stored sent mail into conversations without a Message-ID, problems Thunderbird and Evolution don't have. #### #15 Updated by Leon Bogaert 10 months ago I'm usually using postfix as MTA and dovecat for Maildir -> IMAP. Usually almost a basic setup as it comes with the Ubuntu/Debian repositories. #### #16 Updated by Jim Nelson 10 months ago * **Status** changed from _5_ to _Open_ * **Resolution** deleted (<strike>_invalid_</strike>) You realize that such a setup can be configured to create a Sent Mail folder, correct? Doing some research, I see that this is not an out-of-the-box configuration and there may be many servers out there without it, so I'm reopening the ticket. However, the problems I listed above still stand; this really is a problem better solved on the server for those (and other) reasons. #### #17 Updated by Leon Bogaert 10 months ago Do you have some good resources on that? I remember searching for such a solution a couple of years ago but I couldn't find anything about this back then. #### #18 Updated by Jim Nelson 10 months ago I didn't dig in deeply, but some links I found yesterday: http://workaround.org/ispmail/lenny/make-postifx-send-mails-to-dovecot http://www.virtualmin.com/node/8732 Also worth looking at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/755853/postfix-send-a-copy-of-every-email- to-a-given-email-address #### #19 Updated by David . 8 months ago With gmail I _guess_ it would suffice to Bcc: myself. Thus (and not only thus) I'd wish to have an account setting to specify default (b)cc address(es). Edit: The Bcc: email to oneself would need to be marked as read (and removed from Inbox). Don't know if there's a header/message id to identify the email ... #### #20 Updated by Baptiste Darthenay 8 months ago Sorry for spamming this thread, but I'm using a Yahoo email account, and an another IMAP mailbox, which I can't tweak. The idea of loosing what I wrote really prevents me right now to use this beautiful software. Why is it so tricky to copy the sent email in the 'Sent' folder if it exist? How could I help you? #### #21 Updated by Jim Nelson 8 months ago Some of the trickiness is that Geary doesn't have support for command continuation (#3737) which is necessary upload mail to an IMAP server (this is also required for drafts). Another aspect that's difficult is that some servers (including Yahoo) can be configured to store sent messages in a Sent folder, but there's no simple way to detect if this is on or off via IMAP. We would probably need to require the user configure this manually for non-Gmail accounts. So, if you do want to start using Geary, you can, at least with your Yahoo account. There's a checkbox in the configuration which turns on saving sent messages in a Sent folder. Note that Yahoo would be doing this, not Geary. #### #22 Updated by Ray Bond 3 months ago Since you said that you would like to hear from those that need this feature, I took the time to create an account to chime in. I think that only a tiny fraction of total users comment on these sort of issues, particularly when they won't be using the software anymore. I started to switch over to Geary, but then I realized that I couldn't find my sent mail. I was very surprised to see that it really isn't an option to save sent mail automatically in a sent folder. Unfortunately, this is a deal breaker for me, so I'll have to say goodbye to Geary. I use a university email address (IMAP) for most purposes, and I need to be able to review sent items to double check that I have sent the right thing to the right people when I don't get a response, and to pull up a message when I'm talking over the phone with someone concerning an email that I sent them. Not being able to do this ruins an otherwise nice piece of software for me, and I suspect that I'm not the only one. I really like the interface of Geary, and the minimalist, lightweight approach, which contrasts with the likes of heavyweight alternatives like Evolution. To be honest I was somewhat shocked that this was not a feature. I take this capability for granted, and I rely on it on a daily basis. Anyway, keep up the good work, and I'm looking forward to checking out Geary in the future when it is a bit more mature. #### #23 Updated by Jim Nelson 3 months ago * **Target version** set to _0.5.0_ Thanks for your input, Ray, we do indeed want to hear from our users. With drafts and APPEND now implemented in Geary, this feature is a possibility. I don't believe we're going to have time to implement this in time for 0.4, but we'll put it on the table for 0.5, so we can do it right. #### #24 Updated by Jim Nelson 2 months ago This has been requested downstream at https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary/+bug/1224909 #### #25 Updated by Jonathon Jongsma 2 months ago Not to pile too many more "me too" notes here, but I thought I'd note that I was ready to switch to geary for my work email, but there's no way I'll be able to continue using it if I lose all record of my sent messages. And it probably goes without saying, but I obviously have no way of modifying the server configuration of my work email server. It's a shame because I was hoping to be able to use this client. Edit: I missed the fact that you had added it to the roadmap. Great! perhaps I'll eventually be able to use it after all. #### #26 Updated by Stewart Grey about 1 month ago Do you know when 0.5 will be out? I've already made a fool of myself by send multiple emails to one recipient... :s #### #27 Updated by Jim Nelson about 1 month ago We normally follow a six month development cycle that roughly parallels GNOME and Ubuntu's cycles, so you could expect 0.5 out next spring (or so). #### #28 Updated by meles meles about 1 month ago * **Priority** changed from _High_ to _Low_ I'm also affected by this issue. There is no way to set an option like in Yahoo to save the message at GMX. This means that geary is unfortunately still not ready to use for me. #### #29 Updated by meles meles about 1 month ago * **Priority** changed from _Low_ to _High_ sorry, i didn't want to change the priority of the bug, actually i just wanted to set it for my comment. #### #30 Updated by Andrew Herne about 1 month ago I only wish to confirm my use-case same as #22. Love the simplicity of design of this email client, very disappointed to have to discard it for now owing to this problem. Good luck with project! #### #31 Updated by Charles Lehner about 1 month ago I would also like to have this feature. It is frustrating to not have a record of my sent mails. #### #32 Updated by Hadley Rich 29 days ago "Me too" I was really pleased to see 0.4 released and started to try it out today. All in all things work very well, a big step up from 0.3, great job. Unfortunately not having a record of sent mails is a deal breaker for me personally. Having it work server side is a neat idea but if you don't control the server side, quite difficult. I look forward to seeing Geary continue to evolve into a great product. #### #33 Updated by Dool BR 9 days ago I am in the same situation as described in [Note 22](http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/5188#note-22) Having a copy of your sent mails in a sent items folder is a must have in my opinion. Doesn't matter if the server does it automatically or not. For me, I regard the sent items folder as a confirmation that I've sent the email successfully, if something did not send correctly, then it shouldn't be in the sent items folder, but somewhere in drafts or in a sending folder. #### #34 Updated by Federico Bruni 4 days ago Just another "me too" :-) I'm switching from gmail to an "independent and privacy-friend" provider. This missing feature is the most disappointing. I really hope that you'll manage to fix this for 0.5, because I love Geary. My email server is dovecot and the sent folder is already configured. When I send an email from the web client, the email is saved in the sent folder (and I can see it in geary too, of course). When I send an email using geary, it is not saved. --- Bug imported by chaz@yorba.org 2013-11-21 20:20 UTC --- This bug was previously known as _bug_ 5188 at http://redmine.yorba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5188 Unknown milestone "unknown in product geary. Setting to default milestone for this product, "---". Setting qa contact to the default for this product. This bug either had no qa contact or an invalid one. Resolution set on an open status. Dropping resolution
A workaround to this easy to implement could be to have the account's email address included in the Bcc field by default.
And then another "me too". Moving from gmail to a closed IMAP based service and can't use Geary until sent mail is stored.
I can admit that I was very confused in the very moment after I had sent my first email with Geary. It turned out my message just disappeared to the digital nirvana. From me as a user point of view. As it's still very early alpha/beta, I can be very forgiving for this flaw. But will have to return to less-beautiful Claw's Mail as long this hasn't been adressed client side. Reconfiguring the server is no option, too. And even if the Sent/Sent Mail/whatever folders don't exist, Geary should create one instead of discarding the task. To change it would be to hide in some context menu. ('Make this folder special folder > Sent')
Additionally, I don't think there is any available open-source server that implement the submission protocol. postfix declined the patch made by Apple I think, and dovecot is implementing a submission server. But it won't be until the next release. Until then, for the system administrator, a submission server is not really feasable. Geary should include a workaround for the countless mail servers that won't update so soon. Almost every mail server until GMail did not sotre a copy of sent e-mails. Every organization, internet provider, buisness falls in this category. As I said, a lesser evil would be to have Bcc set automatically. You could even have a + alias that would be automatically filtered (using sieve for example) to a Sent folder and marked as read. It won't replace a full store to Sent folder, but help many of us.
Another me too. At work we can not to access to external SNMP server and for this reason we have access an internal SNMP server (with no login) to be able to send emails. I'd like to be able (at mail account) level an option to say (save my sent email to this folder). For now I am losing all the email I send and I have to use the Bcc workaround for now.
(In reply to comment #4) > As I said, a lesser evil would be to have Bcc set automatically. You could even > have a + alias that would be automatically filtered (using sieve for example) > to a Sent folder and marked as read. It won't replace a full store to Sent > folder, but help many of us. Still it remains an evil. Because we cannot make requirements to common mail servers of any kind despite the protocols (POP3(bäh!), IMAP and SMTP). Sieve filtering is again a server side task that will not be available everywhere.
This is ready for review at wip/save-sent-713263. Any adventurous souls are welcome to pull from that branch and give things a go. Any slightly less adventurous souls can wait a few days for the patch to land and get released in a snapshot tarball. We welcome all testing and feedback.
This looks good! Please make one change: * Add the Memory.UnownedBytesBuffer interface to Memory.OffsetBuffer. Look at Memory.ByteBuffer for an easy way to implement the required method. Otherwise, I think this looks fine. Let's wait a couple of days before committing and see if anyone out there wants to try this out.
A few more things we've discovered: * Sent messages should be marked as \Seen * Pass null in for the appended message's INTERNALDATE (let the server set it with its local time) * The checkbox in the Accounts dialog needs a mnemonic
All those points have been taken care of.
This landed in master in commit cce04b8. We'll make a snapshot tarball soon and call for testing on the mailing list, but feel free to test against master now.
Thanks for working on this! Just checked out master then. On sending an email, the message is successfully sent, but there is an error copying it to my sent folder. The message in the Outbox reports "The message was sent successfully, but could not be saved to Sent Mail". Server is Cyrus 2.3, I have a mailbox called "Sent" as a child of INBOX, as per usual for cyrus. Here's the --debug log output: > [deb] 15:47:33 0.109026 smtp-outbox-folder.vala:267: Outbox postman: Marking [SmtpOutboxEmailIdentifer:2] as sent > [deb] 15:47:34 0.891534 imap-engine-replay-queue.vala:208: Other:mike@vee.net:INBOX: Scheduling 1 held server notification operations > [deb] 15:47:34 0.000127 imap-engine-generic-folder.vala:792: Other:mike@vee.net:INBOX do_replay_appended_message: current remote_count=169 reported_remote_count=169 remote_positions=( 169 ) > [deb] 15:47:34 0.056533 imap-engine-generic-folder.vala:813: Other:mike@vee.net:INBOX do_replay_appended_message: 1 new messages in pos::169 > [deb] 15:47:35 0.369621 smtp-outbox-folder.vala:274: Outbox postman: Saving [SmtpOutboxEmailIdentifer:2] to sent mail > [deb] 15:47:35 0.000291 smtp-outbox-folder.vala:277: Outbox postman: Error saving sent mail: Save sent mail enabled, but no sent mail folder > [deb] 15:47:35 0.000012 geary-controller.vala:639: Reported problem: GEARY_ACCOUNT_PROBLEM_SAVE_SENT_MAIL_FAILED Error: Save sent mail enabled, but no sent mail folder
> Outbox postman: Error saving sent mail: Save sent mail enabled, but no sent mail folder Mike, you're running into an issue because your IMAP server doesn't support the "special use" or xlist extensions, or at least it doesn't report anything special about your sent mail folder. As a result, Geary can't currently find the right folder to stash sent mail in. I'm working on fixing this very problem now, bug #713492. Thanks for braving the latest Geary code, and hopefully you'll be able to take advantage of this new sent mail saving feature soon! :)
Ah yes, you're right. I'll keep an eye on bug #713492. Thanks!