Topic awaiting preservation: Transition to Thunderbird (Page 1 of 1)

So I was interested in moving from Outlook to Thunderbird, but I've come across one important annoyance. Deleting an item from the Trash folder does not result in a "Do you want to permanently delete this item?" confirmation.

As I am an idiot, this is a required feature for me. I keep all my past e-mail for reference and I can recall too many times when I've accidentally hit the delete button on a message I opened from my Trash folder. Luckily, Outlook warned me and saved me from losing it forever. Sadly, Thunderbird apparently doesn't care.

I've looked for an extension and I've searched a bit through the support forums, but haven't come up with a way around this. Does anyone here know of anything? I'm quite surprised no one's written an extension for it.

I'm pretty sure you can set your trash bin to never empty unless you empty it... that makes it a two click process to permanently delete something.

Why do you keep anything you want to keep in the Trash folder to begin with!?

Make a folder for archival or something. Then you have to move it to the Trash before you want to delete it.

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Keeping your old mail in your Trash can is a good way to loose all your archived mail when you upgrade or if there is a problem with your computer. I've known a couple of people who did that and lost everything when they did an upgrade.

Like Iron Wallaby said, make one or more archival folders and keep your old e-mails there. Then if you accidentally hit delete, the you can recover the e-mail from the Trash. You can even make a folder called Archive and create subject folders under it to make it easier to find stuff.

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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

Well, I don't put things in the Trash folder that I want to keep, exactly.

Follow along with me: In Outlook, when I'm done with an incoming e-mail, I hit the convenient Delete button, which sends it into Deleted Items. E-mail that I send goes automatically into Sent Items. That's where they stay and I like it. Old incoming in Deleted Items and sent in Sent Items. Easy. No having to move every incoming e-mail to an archive folder.

In Thunderbird, however, I hit delete and it goes into "Trash," which is effectively the Deleted Items folder. To me, it's just a different name for the same folder.

The only thing I ever permanently delete is spam. I keep everything else, because most of it is business and I like having a record of everything. And I don't want to have to move every e-mail to an archive folder, which would be extra clicks for every e-mail.

I know it won't automatically empty the Trash unless I tell it to, but that's not what I'm worried about. As I said, I'm worried about opening an old incoming e-mail and accidentally hitting delete, which happens on occasion. Luckily, Outlook warns me it's about vanish and I can stop myself; Thunderbird doesn't.

I suppose I could remove the Delete button from my e-mail button bar and find an extension that would let me add a button that would move an incoming e-mail I'm done with into a different "Archive" folder, leaving Trash unused. But I would still prefer Thunderbird to tell me something is being permanently deleted because accidents happen.

It does seem odd that there is no confirmation - would have thought there would be a way to enable/disable taht kind of function.

I know this isn't what you're asking about, but I have found the filters for incoming mail to be invaluable - it automatically sends emails to the appropriate folder, and I read it from there.

It's not 100% foolproof of course, as you get people using the wrong email addresses or making poor use of the subject line, etc. But I would hate to live without the filters

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DL-44 said:

I have found the filters for incoming mail to be invaluable

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Ditto.

I too agree with either filters or rules.
To use deleted items as a "have read archive" seems dangerous to me, what if the mail-client decides to auto-empty these items by the order of some obscure setting like Outlooks "auto archive" that no one actually knows what it really does ...

It should be entirely possible to have a rule that says "when read, move to folder <your_folder>" that way you won't need to press anything, read it, act on it, close it and it ends up in the folder of your choice. Should you open one of these old ones and unintentionally press delete it goes into thrash.
/Dan

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It sounds Wes, like you'll have to change the way you work with your email client, use the right tool for the job instead of the trash for an archive, it shouldn't take much to get used toa nd as most people have now suggested using a filter and or rule will make this process automated and may even increase your user experience.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers,

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In Thunderbird, however, I hit delete and it goes into "Trash," which is effectively the Deleted Items folder. To me, it's just a different name for the same folder.

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I agree. They are two different name for the same thing. No matter what you call it, it's not a good idea to use the Trash can as a repository for old messages. I understand your desire to use a single key for sorting the messages. Bobbins ran in to a similar problem when she switch from Outlook to Thunderbird.

It is odd that Thunderbird doesn't give you an option to ask for a confirmation before deleting an e-mail from the Trash can.

It would also be nice if Thunderbird allowed you to set up a filter based on changing the message status, although I imagine that would be a difficult feature to implement in a user friendly way.

At present your best bet is to get used to using filters and have Thunderbird sort the e-mails into folders as they come in.

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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.