The initial work for the archive feature has landed. This bug will be used to track the remaining issues.

Bryan, some questions for you - Do we want a special icon for the archives folder? Do we want the Archives folder to sort up with the other special folders like trash, sent, etc? For English, it conveniently sorts near the top but other languages won't be so lucky. If so, I can file more bugs for those.

Yes, we should treat the Archives folder like a special mailbox so it sorts up near the other special folders. We should look into an icon, but a folder icon will work for now.

I think a case can be made that "archive" should result in a copy function rather than a move function. If you backup your HD, you don't expect the backed up partitions to be moved, just copied. The feature seems to be working fine, aside from the fact that the Archives folder is not seen in the folder pane initially. But I think there is a bug for that already.

Initial versions of the archive feature were designed to just do one thing, file (move) messages to pre-specified folders. Future versions should have more adaptable hooks into the behaviour of archive; essentially it's possible to just be an "auto-process" button that runs filters does other configurable actions. Once we have the base case complete and polished we can try to advance beyond the simple copy to folders. It might be possible to start on extensions in these directions.

Either I don't understand this new archive feature or it doesn't really work for me. I click in the message header pane of a mail on "archive" and than I get an empty folder (under my trash) named "Archive". But there is no mail inside, the mail is still in the inbox. If I click two times on the archive button and than delete the empty folder, than I get a subfolder "Archive" of my trash with this mail inside I want to archive (and than its no more in the Inbox). I used it for the first time. If this is really a bug I can open a new bug for this if desired. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090114 Shredder/3.0b2pre

Sorry, the problem I described in Comment #5 is Bug 473373.

General policy has been that meta bugs are not allowed to block, so we ought to mark the dependent bugs as blocking (or not) instead. Presumably the idea behind this is so that it's possible to triage bugs at a fine granularity. I will admit to never having been completely convinced that this policy is the right one, and since you're a driver and seem to have this work in hand (perhaps even landing in one fell swoop), I'm gonna let you decide what (if anything) you want to do about that.

ok, clearing blocking.

See also: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=476590

bug 476590 might be worth investigating, but does not block. discussion can continue on that bug.

Bug 480470 could be added to the depending list as well, because the missing toolbar icon produces inconsistence.

I ported the Archive UI to SM in bug 482458 (mostly based on TB's implementation but including a context menu entry and shortcut Shift+A instead of just A). You might want to take a look at the changes made there, especially Neil's comment in bug 482458 comment 22.

My understanding after reading comment 4 was that this meta-bug should contain not only the bugs (things that do not work properly) but also all the future enhancements to the initial archive function, this is supported by the inclusion of : Bug 607295 - Provide UI for new archive granularity and folder structure options Bug 561617 - Add Semester and Quaterly Archive possibility . -After these 2 bugs are landed we shall have a very flexible function that works well if you have few mailboxes to archive e.g. less than 10. If you have more than 20 this is too much time consuming and users will forget the idea to use it... This is a manual only function : the user select manually the message then run archive (menu, button or shortcut). -A semi-automatic method is needed : the user define (or update) rules for archiving (also called "filters") for each mailbox, they are run manually (menu, button or shortcut) on all the mailboxes of an account or of all the accounts. There is no bug report filed but this is discussed in the next bug (93094) and may be considered as a subset of it. So, is it necessary to fill one ? -A fully automatic method is needed : the user define (or update) rules for archiving (also called "filters") for each mailbox, the process of archiving is started automatically by a scheduler. See : Bug 93094 - [RFE] Add an archive mail feature (automatic archiving of messages per month /other interval) dated 2001 with 57 votes referenced also by bug 423488 because it is like the "Auto archive" feature in Microsoft Outlook. This is very important for users and should be referenced here and implemented rapidly. -A way to use archives is needed : view them, search them, etc. . The ideal solution is that they can be processed the same way as the "current" (not archived) mailboxes by the users. There is no bug report filed but this is discussed in bug 93094 and may be considered as a subset of it. So, is it necessary to fill one ? -Bug 481185 - Remove all attachment when Archiving seems a good idea to decrease the size of archives and avoid to have twice the attachment. It should be referenced here.