I'm using Thunderbird 102.0.3 under Windows 11Pro with a Fastmail IMAP account.

The inbox is the currently selected folder. "View -> Sort by" has Date, Descending and Unthreaded selected. The folder columns are set to Display message thread, Sort by star, Attachments, Subject, From, Data and Size.

I right clicked on the inbox folder in the folder pane, selected Properties , pressed the Repair Folder button and then the OK button.

Actual result:

Lots of activity in the folder listing. New messages are now at the bottom. View -> Sort By for that folder has changed to Date, Ascending and Threaded. Folder columns has changed to Display message thread, Sort by star, Attachments, Subject, Sort by read, Correspondents, Junk status and Date

Expected result:

Any errors in the folder listing would be fixed, but none of the personal preferences (such as View -> Sort By or folder column settings) would be modified.

I don't know where folder specific settings are stored but if they are stored in the folders *.msf file they should not change (to default settings?) when you do a "repair folder". They should keep the current settings as is. I regularly suggest users use "repair folder" in the MozillaZine forums when they are missing messages in the folder listing. I can't remember a single time where those users mentioned the sort or column settings were wrong before using repair folder. They just wanted to get their messages back.

folder prefs are stored in .msf

do you agree, dupe of Bug 1568355 - Repair Folder should attempt to remember column settings for the folder
Larger list https://mzl.la/3aTzlDs

This bug report covers more than what the title of Bug 1568355 talks about. One of the comments in Bug 1568355 states its a duplicate of bug 550286 which is just about columns. Yet Magnus has a comment in Bug 1568355 that stated its a duplicate of Bug 1737216, which mentions it setting sorting to threaded and doesn't mention columns at all. However Bug 1737216 says its RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1568355 . Its a mess.

So I don't agree this bug report is a duplicate unless somebody changes the title of the other bug report to make it clear its about more than just columns.

I wrote this bug report because somebody in the MozillaZine forums complained about repair folder setting "view -> sort by" to threaded in 102.0.2, and when I tried to duplicate the problem I discovered a bigger problem.

FYI one of the bug reports in that larger list (Bug 1739609) was about "repair text encoding", not "repair folder".

I updated the summary for bug 1568355.