evolution: follow up - flagged & status - important inconsistencies

[Nick Russell]

Binary package hint: evolution

In Evolution on Hardy creating a search folder to filter for follow up flagged messages returns no result.

This happens on both my machines. I have 4 imap accounts: 2 gmail, 2 work related.

This is a little bit like https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/180634

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description didn't include enough information. You may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.
 We have instructions on debugging some types of problems. http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures
At a minimum, we need:
1. the specific steps or actions you took that caused you to encounter the problem,
2. the behavior you expected, and
3. the behavior you actually encountered (in as much detail as possible).
Thanks!

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

Steps to reproduce:

1) Open Evolution
2) From the Search menu choose to create a new search folder
3) Select criteria Follow Up Flagged
4) Choose to search any OR all folders (bug occurs either way)

Expected behavior:

Opening the search folder would produce a list of flagged messages.

Actual behavior:

The search folder produces no results even though there are many flagged messages in the folders being searched.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks, that works fine for me, can you reproduce the same with another new user configuration? I've marked a few messages as "Follow up" and they get showed on the search folder, not confirming.

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

I can confirm that setting up a new user account with the same email address account the problem still occurs.

The problem also occurs with my partners email account (also imap) on the same computer.

It also occurs on my other system, a hardy laptop.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

maybe related to bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446316 ; can someone confirm?

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

Here's the gnome bug report: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322424

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

Ok, I've figured out what the problem is. There appear to be two kinds of Flags.

There is the 'Flagged' column which appears by default in Ubuntu. Clicking in here next to a message makes an orange exclamation emblem appear next to that message. However these messages do not appear in a Follow Up Flagged search folder.

But if you right click on a message and choose 'Mark for follow up' these DO show up in a follow up search folder but the orange emblem doesn't appear next to them. I've discovered that you can add a column 'Flag status' which displays a little flag when you 'Mark for follow up'.

This isn't a bug as such, but its very odd behavior.

'Flagged' and 'Flagged for follow up' are completely different but overlapping features. One should be got rid of or one should be renamed.

There should be an option to filter for 'Flagged' messages, at the moment it is only possible to search for 'Flagged for follow up'.

At the very least Ubuntu should not enable the flagged column by default, and should instead show only the 'Flag status' column, since this is the more comprehensive of the two features.

To be honest, I can't get my head round why 2 of this feature was ever implemented in the first place! Weird.

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

The "flagged" you say with the exclamation point is the "important" mark. You can search for these messages with "Status - is - important". They are clearly different things since you may want to mark something unimportant for follow up (it may be urgent but not important).

Here is the wording comparison for the two features in different contexts:

Column names: "flagged" and "flag status".
Search folder names: "status - is - important" and "follow up - is flagged".
Right-click for activation: "mark as important" and "mark for follow up".
Right-click for deactivation: "mark as unimportant" and "flag completed / clear flag".

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

New to Ubuntu it wasn't clear to me that these were different features, but it is now thanks. I think particularly for users migrating from Outlook this is a bit confusing, I never would have thought to look what the sub-options were under 'Status' when creating a search folder, because to my Microsoft-blinded eyes anything that I tick next to a message is a follow-up flag. So i accept that it was my mistake, but I still think the difference between the features could be made clearer, especially when it comes to search folders, and even more escpecially when you consider that 'follow up flagged' is practically a hidden feature in Ubuntu since the column isn't shown by default.

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

Well, in my previous comment I was actually trying to make it clearer, using a side to side comparison, that this is a bug, not a user mistake.

You can't give two features the same name in the main UI (read "column names") and expect the user to guess the correct naming.

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

Ah sorry, launchpad puts me on the defensive! I personally think this is a bug. (To repeat myself somewhat) especially as part of one of the feature is 'hidden' by default.

[Nick Russell (thatnick)]

In the message list in Karmic the status column is still titled 'Flagged' (as opposed to simply 'Status' or 'Important'). This is confusing because there is also another column called 'Follow up flag'. When creating a search folder the status field is referred to as 'Status' 'Important'.

[Jörg Frings-Fürst (jff-de)]

bug from 2008 - version not longer supported
change status to invalid