It should be possible not to simply use a folder as archive, without the year month hierarchy. (Some imap servers don't even allow more than one level of sub folders, no?)

there are a few possibilities. 1. Have a global pref - flat archiving. 2. Have a per-identity pref for flat archiving 3. check the nsIMsgFolder property canCreateSubfolders on the archive folder before trying to create/use sub-folders of the archive folder. This will fix the UW case. 4. Have configurable granularity for the sub-folder creation. None, month, year, either global or per-identity. We should definitely do 3 no matter what. A global pref for 4 would be perfect for me, since I would much prefer yearly archiving.

Isn't part of the (non-UX) rationale for the archive functionality to offset the performance and resource ramifications of the current mail store when you have a folder with a gajillion messages? Which is to say, adding an option to make it easier for thunderbird to shoot itself in the foot seems inadvisable.

Different people archive a different number of messages. Most people don't get 100K e-mails a year. For me, having a year archive would not be shooting myself in the foot. It can't be worse the the gmail All Mail folder.

I agree that yearly is likely enough for the majority of users. I'd be +1 on switching to yearly as default granularity. Doing 4. would seem good.

I'd prefer 4 too (or per account, depending on what we end up with in bug 476217)

Marking this blocking as it is required for the GMail Archive blocking item. I think we want a per account preference for flat (single folder) or structured. Added configuration to the Archive structuring was designed to go into extensions. The UI possibilities are almost endless for different ways to structure archiving. If we want to add a UI this would only need to be a checkbox, however I'd rather hold off on the pref UI for now. I haven't thought much where it could go.

In an ideal world, we might detect existing folder structure and base our choice on that. That way we'd interop well by default with IMAP accounts that are used with clients that do the more naive implementation of just a single folder (eg Gmail, Postbox...).

this adds an archive granularity attribute to the server, sets the default to yearly, and makes the archive command respect the granularity. I've also made the archive folder respect the fact that some imap servers can't create sub-folders. Requesting r/sr for the simple backend changes, r for the front end change. I used the server instead of the identity because it seemed more tied to the server, especially when we get to GMail, which I'll have to make use a single Archive folder. I don't know if we want a UI for setting the granularity - I'll leave that up to Bryan...

Comment on attachment 374499 [details] [diff] [review] proposed fix >+ /** >+ * @{ >+ * This attribute and constants control the granularity of sub-folders of the >+ * Archives folder - either messages go in the single archive folder, or a >+ * yearly archive folder, or in a monthly archive folder with a yearly >+ * parent folder. >+ */ >+ const long singleArchiveFolder = 0; >+ const long perYearArchiveFolders = 1; >+ const long perMonthArchiveFolders = 2; >+ attribute long archiveGranularity; >+ /** @} */ I think it may be worth a note here that users may override this value if the server doesn't support sub folders. nit: first /** is two-spaces too far indented. >+pref("mail.server.default.archive_granularity", 1); This changes what we have currently - is that intentional?

(In reply to comment #9) > >+pref("mail.server.default.archive_granularity", 1); > > This changes what we have currently - is that intentional? yes, see #c4

standard8 ^^

Hit submit too early, I tried this out earlier and it was fine, so r/sr=me with the comments changed as per comment 9.

I've landed this. But it occurs to me that what I would really want is to have newly archived messages go in the top level archive folder, and age away older messages into sub-folders of the archive folder by year. Users do this by hand now for some folders, e.g., in January or February, I might take the messages from my Sent folder from last year and move them into a folder for 2008... We could ask the user for permission to do this, which is what I believe Outlook does.

I don't have a porblem with whether the default is monthly or yearly, but changing the default on existing users was a bit weird - I ended up searching all over the place for missing archive messages before finding them in 2009 (rather than 2009/2009-05) (I filed bug 49781 before someone pointed out this was intentional.) I would suggest this is not "fixed", until a UI is added that allows users to control the preference (mail.server.server#.archive_granularity) OR at least it defaults to match current archive structure until that is done.

(In reply to comment #14) > I would suggest this is not "fixed", until a UI is added that allows users to > control the preference (mail.server.server#.archive_granularity) OR at least it > defaults to match current archive structure until that is done. Given we haven't done a final release of TB, and this archive has only been in one or two betas, I think we can just relnote it. When we did this bug, we decided that a UI option would be subject to another bug, I think if clarkbw wanted it (or someone filed it).

I appreciate all the work you guys have been doing on this, but I am using TB 3 Beta 3 and would like simple step-by-step instructions on how to set the archive granularity to 2 for monthly breakout. I don't find it from Help or so far by going through these bugs. Will someone please put it online at someplace like http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes#Message_Archiving_and_Folders and report that here and in all related bug reports? Don't assume a technical background. Even us professional developers for other products or tools are not automatically familiar with the inner workings of TB development, and we don't want to have to become familiar with it. If it involves editing a file, then provide the full path to the file, the line to be edited before and after the change, each step, spelled out, no matter how obvious it may seem.

I have been informed in private email that monthly granularity (2) will be the default with Beta 4, so I can look forward to that. However, I only need such granularity for two accounts. For most of my other accounts, annual will be sufficient, especially for folders other than the Inbox, I would like to be able to set the granularity not only by account but by folder.

I don't think that's true - yearly granularity is the default, afaik - the pref in the config editor is mail.server.serverXX.archive_granularity where serverXX is the server you want to set. 1 is the default (yearly), 2 is per month, iirc. To change the server default, mail.server.default.archive_granularity.

I wonder if this is one of those cases where it's actually worth exposing the pref through the UI.

Those "serverXX" preferences are in general tricky to edit manually in the Config Editor. They don't exist by default, and you have to figure out the correct server number first before being able to create it. It's a useful feature to be able to specify the archive granularity, maybe that fits as a drop-down menu underneath the archive-folder location in the account manager?

Agreed UI for it would be useful

Okay, I finally found the Config Editor, which I had not know about before. For the benefit of others, it should be explained that one gets to it thus: Top menu: Edit Preferences Advanced Tab: General Button: Config Editor Scroll down to line "mail.server.default.archive_granularity" and double-click on it. Change the presented value to 2 if it is one and you want monthly. Now all we need is a way to do that by folder rather than by account, but we're making progress. That sly remark about voiding the warranty if one uses the Config Editor is funny.

(In reply to comment #19) > I wonder if this is one of those cases where it's actually worth exposing the > pref through the UI. I've just spun off bug 517514 to keep this in mind, nothing was filed yet.

Okay, mostly working okay, except for one quibble, that I can make another bug, or we can keep it within this one: There is no "Copies and Folders" option under Account Settings for Local Folders, where one might set archiving. One can archive messages in folders in Local Folders, but when one does the messages go back into the archive folders of the account from which they originally came. While this could be useful, I have set up Local Folders to be external backup storage (which is itself backed up regularly). It would be helpful to be able to archive messages within Local Folders, wherever they may be physically.

Another problem is that there is only one Archives folder tree for the account, and if one archives a Sent message it goes there. I would really like to have a separate tree at least for Sent messages.

Yet another problem is that if one opens a message in one of the Archives folders, the button still has the label "Archive". Obviously one isn't going to want to archive something that has already been archived. It should read "Unarchive" or "Retrieve" and move the message back to the Inbox (or Sent folder) from which it came, and in the right position in the date/time order.

The ideal solution from my standpoint would be to be able to set up separate archive trees in Local Folders for each account's inbox and sent folders, and to have a setting for automatic archiving at set intervals or after set periods of time. That would move messages of different types onto external storage to save disk space and reduce the burden on RAM that seems to come when inboxes contain too many messages.

I would also like granularity settings of 3 - weekly 4 - daily I get about 3000 valid messages a day on one of my accounts, which is typical of commercial users (although in my case, a non-profit organization). I also note that the Sort By menu option is grayed out for archive folders. I would like to be able to change the display order the way I can with other folders, even if they are stored internally in sending date order.

Incidentally, one of the reasons for wanting by-folder archiving is that it is convenient to save encrypted or PGP-signed messages to a separate folder, probably on an external drive that is itself encrypted. That would include enigmail. Those need special handling.

Jon, this bug is closed. Please open new bugs for any other feature you may consider useful, and/or discuss those in forums and newsgroups. Thanks.