Evolution virtual trash / "real" trash on IMAP server

[Laurent Simonneau]

Hi,

This bug refer to the bug 12439 of evolution
(http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6061).
Evolution developpers don't seems to understand the importance of this bug. So,
evolution being the main Ubuntu MUA, I think this problem concerne Ubuntu.

I explain you quickly the problem :
The evolution Trash is a virtual folder showing mails marked as DELETED on IMAP
server.
In a "one user" on "one desktop" and "one OS", it's probably a really good think
for all reasons given by evolution team.

But in my environnement : multiple user, multiple OSes, multiple MUA, ... it's a
critical probleme.
For security reason (too easy to definitively destroy a mail) user the MUA must
copy deleted mail in a real Trash mailbox on the IMAP server.

I can use another MUA like thunderbird, but I loose the really good integration
 of evolution in ubuntu.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206061: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206061

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The place to get such bug fixed is really the upstream bugzilla

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

New upstream bug URL is: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206061

[Jonathan Ernst (jonathan.ernst)]

Same bug, but for the Spam folder : Bug #135485

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto (khaeru)]

I'm sorry to post here instead of upstream, but there have been ~17 duplicates over 6 years and no developer action, leading me to believe that upstream is *not* the place to get this fixed. Is there anything to be done to motivate an actual fix? Someone (within Ubuntu, maybe) to beg, or a bounty to establish somehow? Please tell me what I could do that might make a difference.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There is ten of thousand of bugs opened and this one is not a priority I doubt that somebody from the Ubuntu team will work on this any time soon, upstream would be a better place to ask for comments

[Tessa (unit3)]

So that's basically a "good luck, nobody's ever going to fix this horribly broken behaviour" then, since Paul already pointed out upstream seems to have no intention of fixing it?

[Michael Pangopoulos (mostblind)]

IMO this behaviour defeats the purpose of IMAP. The main reason for using IMAP, at least in my case, is to have my mail in sync, wherever I am. With Evolution I have to download heaps of "deleted" messages to my cell phone just because Evolution can't get it right.

If they can't understand that people use several clients on several OS and devices, then maybe it's about time to start looking for a new Ubuntu main MUA.

[Matthew Gregg (mcg)]

Wouldn't the "fix" for this problem, be to "expunge" your messages? Why do you keep so many delete messages around? Evolution is correct with the way it handles deleted mail(marked as delete not moved to trash). Other clients can be configured to work in this way and is the way the IMAP standard says it should work.

[Michael Pangopoulos (mostblind)]

This 'fix' sounds like a workaround. Why would I want messages marked for deletion laying around in the inbox in the first place?

If this behaviour is opt-in in other clients, Evolution should at least make this behaviour opt-out.

[Kasimir Gabert (kasimir-g)]

I agree that this is very annoying. However, it is possible to do this currently. Just go into your folder, and then press Ctrl+E. It should permanently delete all messages that are marked as 'deleted'.

[Frederik Elwert (frederik-elwert)]

Evolution is actually correct here: http://deflexion.com/2006/05/imap-way-of-deleting-message

But if the users whish for a non-standard way, it might be nice to have a non-default option to move deleted mails. But be aware that you aks the developers to implement something wrong.

[Marcel (marcel-vd-berg)]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 8.10 alpha6 64-bit Evolution 2.24.1
I have 1 Evolution Trash and one IMAP Trash.
I don't have the correct icons for my IMAP folders also.

I rather would have the Thunderbird/Lightning combination syncing with gnome-pilot, since Mozilla does more active development IMO.

[Václav Šmilauer (eudoxos)]

Upstream bugreport has eplugin for disabling virtual folders on imap accounts. (It someone has a few hours to integrate that into evolution source and upload to his/her ppa, it would be much appreciated...; I cannot do it ATM unfortunately)

[Guillaume Lanquepin-Chesnais (guyomel)]

I still have this problem with Jaunty... Although the bug was posted in 2005 !!! Who I must kill to have an fucking checkbox with "Use server Trash and Junk folders" ? Since 2005, nobody finds a fix for this behaviour

[Sir Thorn (sirthorn)]

The comment above you mentions a fix (via plugin) in the upstream report. Before you go cussing out the developers here, you could at least try it and say if it works or not.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

To maintain a respectful atmosphere, please follow the code of conduct - http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct/ . Bug reports are handled by humans, the majority of whom are volunteers, so please bear this in mind.

[Guillaume Lanquepin-Chesnais (guyomel)]

Sorry, I didn't find that plugin...The tarball contains Makefile.am and sources but no configure neither makefile . And, thus I didn't success to compile it. Maybe you are able to fix that, not me...

I'm sorry to be aggressive but when I see the evolution FAQ (http://www.go-evolution.org/FAQ#Why_do_I_have_two_Trash_folders_for_the_same_account.3F) who says: "yes, you have 2 trash, but what is the problem?", the number of times that was reported as bug (see gnome bugzilla), and this bug is still open since 2005 although an plugin and an patch exist...

Usually, I'm very impressed by developers but, in this case, I'm little be disappointed ...

[Wadelius (wadelius)]

I agree with Guillaume, I'm also a bit disappointed. On my phone I can easily select the folder that it should threat as trash, but when I first could not find this feature in Evolution I was very confused. This should be available. Other than this minor anoyance, I think Evolution is the best client I've used so far.

[Andrea Garbarini (garba)]

same problem here, i was about to open a new bug report but i seem to understand this a problem with evolution (at first i thought it was a problem with the imap server)... I agree, this is irritating, I am attaching a screenshot: compare with kmail's behaviour and the web client: deleted an email in evo but it was sent to evo's virtual trash folder (the trash folder on the imap server is empty). Best regards, andre

[Felipe Figueiredo (philsf)]

The upstream bug has a patch that has been considered to work. Can this be targeted for Karmic?

If so, can I as a tester help in any way? I have little to none packaging skills, but I'm willing to spend a few hours if it will mean that this patch will make it into Karmic (assuming it's not already part of the next upstream release).

Does the Ubuntu Evolution maintainer have info on the status of this patch regarding Karmic, if it's already ?

[Busby (mobusby)]

Frederik Elwert wrote on 2008-06-19: Evolution is actually correct here: http://deflexion.com/2006/05/imap-way-of-deleting-message

No, evolution is not correct. The correct behavior would be to not allow messages to be moved, since IMAP does not support moving messages. If the Evolution devs want to hold to the official IMAP standard, then they ought to hold to it and only provide the user with real IMAP commands. Or stop supporting IMAP altogether.

Sadly, I think that is the direction Evolution, and the rest of the world, is headed. The devs must believe that IMAP is an old standard who's day is waining. The future must lie exclusively with Exchange servers (where all the development is focused).

[Guillaume Lanquepin-Chesnais (guyomel)]

As we have a patch, it would be great to have package then. Like Felipe, I have no skills in packaging but I'm really willing to do my best as tester. Please, can somebody package it in his PPA ?

[Carl Friis-Hansen (carl-friis-hansen)]

For Delete message Evolution is using:
  IMAPv4 EXPUNGE Command
instead of
  \Deleted flag set

For search message Evolution is using:
  fetch all mail, inclusive body where apply, and do a local search (The POP3 way)
instead of
  IMAPv4 SEARCH Command

Here is a fresh example why it is a problem:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just lost over 800 deleted emails. I had borrowed a laptop with Ubuntu 9.10, configured my usual IMAP email account in Evolution. There where practical reasons for me not to use my Squirrel mail to the same IMAP account.
After deleting some 800 messages and giving the laptop back, I found that the deleted messages where nowhere on the IMAP server.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Using many different clients over the last 10 years, this is the first time I encounter an IMAP client that totally missed the Idea with Internet Message Access Protocol. Evolution should display a clear warning, that the application does not follow the standard of the IMAP protocol or they should correct the client ASAP.
This disrespect has gone on since 2005 and has been deemed wishful thinking by the otherwise so great Evolution team.

We can all have different ideas about how an email client should work, but to ignore the whole purpose of the IMAP protocol is not the best way and the proprietary delete and search implementation is also a security concern and massive misuse of Internet bandwidth.

In todays IMAP the "Deleted" flag and the Search command are is to be used.
Flags defined in the IMAP4 protocol serves to tell weather an email is deleted or not. The IMAP server will take care of presenting a deleted email as being in the Trash folder and the server will normally also take care of expunging deleted emails after for example 7 days or so. These flags are stored on the server, so different clients accessing the same mailbox at different times can detect state changes made by other clients.

Sadly it is the same issue with *Server-side searches* that is *not* offered by Evolution. Some of us have more that 10,000 emails and need at times to search through the text body of *all* the messages. Such a search takes about 5 seconds when issuing a Server-side search and the only download are the headers of the result - perfect. Such a search is impossible in Evolution, which only provide a locally implemented search. Theoretically one could wait a day or too for Evolution to download all the email bodies, but how complicated can it be to implement a real Server-side search?

Most other IMAP clients use the correct way of Deleting (and Searching). I think (guess) that the problem, seen from Evolutions' standpoint, is that everything is done correctly with respect to POP3 and that the different architecture need for full blown IMAP4rev1 functionality is problematic.

So my recommendations is to clearly state, in the account definition, something like this:
Server type: IMAP (Partly implemented)
Description: For reading and storing mail on IMAP servers. Delete and Search act in POP3 style.

Until such time the RFC...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not sure what the recent comment is about, evolution does flag delete emails which is what users complain about on this bug since there are some to want delete to erase emails rather than flag those

[Paul Smith (psmith-gnu)]

Sebastien is correct that Carl's message is missing information. Evo most definitely DOES mark messages as deleted and does NOT expunge them (unless you use the Expunge action of course; the keybinding for this is CTRL-E so it's possible Carl hit it by accident). The entire concept of storing your email in your main INBOX, marked as deleted, but wanting to keep it around, is fraught with danger--it takes only a slip of a finger to delete all those messages. Hopefully Carl will choose a more reliable and less dangerous method of storing wanted email in the future, such as moving it to a folder: that's why people use IMAP after all, for the folder support.

I don't know about the search feature issue; if it's a feature of only newer IMAP servers it's possible Evo doesn't support it.

However, I don't think Sebastien's characterization of the bug is correct either. People don't want delete to erase emails. What this bug is asking for is that delete should actually move the emails to another physical folder on the IMAP server, rather than what it does now, which is mark the email as deleted on the server (and make it visible in the virtual folder Trash).

Just to be clear, the way Evo works is the way the IMAP standard intends IMAP to be used. There is absolutely no question about that. I don't understand Busby's comment: I think he's just raising a straw man. The way the IMAP standard intended email moves to be done is exactly how Evo does it: you copy the message to the target folder, then mark the original for deletion.

IMAP is a very problematic protocol, because it lets the underlying implementation, which is often counter-intuitive to people, show through into the standard. This not only means that the behavior of the server (what things are easy and what things are hard) is visible through the protocol, but it also biases the implementation in various ways. For example, IMAP assumes that it's very difficult to delete messages from a folder: this is because many implementations of mail servers keep all mail in a given folder in one long file: deleting a message out of the file involves rewriting the whole file... and even for medium-sized folders that's expensive. Even if your IMAP server implementation used something more intelligent such as one file per email with directories for folders, or if it used a database backend, or whatever, so that deletes are cheap, the IMAP standard carries with it the baggage of the early implementations.

This also proscribes the way IMAP is intended to be used. The model IMAP intends is that you "save up" your deletions for a while, then do them all in bulk. Thus, the standard creates a "/deleted" flag (flags are typically kept in a metadata file or even a database on the server, that is much cheaper to manipulate than the very large raw email file). The idea is you delete messages, and copy-then-delete messages, etc. and at the end of these operations you run the "expunge" command and all those deletes finally take effect. The model is that you run "expunge" regularly (maybe every time you exit your mail client, or maybe after every "session" of using email), but NOT after every single del...

[Guillaume Lanquepin-Chesnais (guyomel)]

This bug is not a discussion about the best way to implement IMAP. It exists two concurrents way of doing, one adds flag and virtual trash, another one move emails to a trash folder. Of course, I well see the point of Evo devs: it is faster to marks email as deleted than move them. But that is not my complain: I just wish a check box to switch for one behavior to the other one.

[Carl Friis-Hansen (carl-friis-hansen)]

It is possible that I have misunderstood how Evu works, but one thing is for certain, you misunderstood the main point and I will tell this from a more practical point of view, something reproductive. If anyone wants to try it out, I will gladly open an email account just for the research, if we kan find some way of getting in direct contact with each other, like cfriisha at jabber dot org.

Main point: After deleting mail in a sub folder, this mail appears in the Evu. Trash folder and not in the server side Trash folder.

Behavior: Of all the mail clients I have used, only Evu. does deletion tis way.

Reproduction scenario:
IMAP server = courier on Ubuntu 9.04
IMAP client = Evolution 2.28.1 on Ubuntu 9.10
IMAP account = INBOX, INBOX.Drafts, INBOX.Sent, INBOX.Trash, INBOX.friends

There are a lot more folders on the actual account, but the first four are the standard ones and then I included one of my extra folders.

The steps:
I receive a mail in my INBOX from <email address hidden> which I read, close and drag to the INBOX.friends folder.
Later I highlight the email from <email address hidden> in the INBOX.friends and hit the Del key.

The actual result:
<email address hidden> does not appear in INBOX.Trash but rather in Trash.

My problem with this is that the folder Trash is not anywhere to find on the server, which suggests to me that Trash is a local folder. If I want to undelete <email address hidden> I will have to do it from that particular Evu. client.

The expected result: (As with any other client I have ever tried)
<email address hidden> appear in INBOX.Trash.

and I can later recover that email from any client, anywhere, at any time.

Why the difference:
From what I see Sebastien and Paul write, it appears that Evu. really does mark the mail on the server as deleted, so could it be that things doesn't work for me and the OP because of strange behavior of the Courier IMAP server, which I would have thought was a rather common server?

[Carl Friis-Hansen (carl-friis-hansen)]

A note about the directory structure.
As you can see on the picture, the INBOX.Trash is not iconized as trash, but is actually showing the contents of the trash folder on the server. The Trash folder on the other hand, is icinized as trash, but is outside the structure of the INBOX and is not represented on the server and is the folder where Evu. presents the deleted mail.

Delete in non Evu. client:
INBOX.friends ---> INBOX.Trash

Delete in Evu. client:
INBOX.friends ---> local-machine.Trash

[Sebastian Hasait (shasait)]

@Carl:
Sorry you didn't understand how Evo works... the Evo-Trash-Folder ist not local on your client, it is virtual and contains all messages marked with the DELETED-flag. So the message stays in INBOX.friends, but is marked as deleted. When Evo lists all the messages of INBOX.friends, it only display those without DELETED-flag.

@ALL:
The main problem is that Evo implements the written standard, but all other mail clients by default don't do this and behave different. So users are confused, when using other clients - and this software was made to be used by humans(users) and not to confuse them.
I think if developers weight papers more than useability, something is wrong in the system!!!

[Trois Singes (trois-singes)]

What could we do in order to vote for this feature ? I know a lot of users (including myself) preferring Thunderbird over Evo on Ubuntu because of the lack of this feature, and despite the better integration of Evo. What a pity !

[Alexander Pas (alexanderpas)]

From #25 Just lost over 800 deleted emails.

My response: so what? didn't you just deleted them?
If you didn't want to lose them, you shouldn't have deleted them in the first place.
If you wanted to keep them, just not in your inbox, you should've stored them in an folder.

TRASH IS NOT AN ARCHIVE!
Trash is prevent accidents, nothing more!

let me make one thing clear, if you're using trash as an archive of your messages, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

I am voting strongly against this feature request, because there IS s a reason it is specified this way in IMAP.
The only sad part is that evolution is about the only mailclient that does it the right way, and all others are using POP3 style on IMAP servers. (It's like running a steam train on electrified rails, and complaining there are no water and coal points along the track.)

[mikef (mfarewell)]

I accept that Evolution is implementing IMAP as intended, however the YOUR DOING IT WRONG argument is a silly one. Usability is about producing a system which works in a human natural way, not necessarily the most sensible. Users of IMAP want to be able to view and manage their emails in a consistent and logical way.. when an ordinary user uses Evolution they end up with 2 trash folders and 2 junk folders; when they junk or delete their emails and then switch client, their emails still appear in their inbox. This causes confusion and leads people to switch to Thunderbird. The internet is littered with comments of people using thunderbird in place of evolution for exactly this reason, in spite of the integration advantages.

If evolution was a multi-platform email client then the argument might hold more water, people could choose to use it exclusively and would never notice the difference. As it is it isn't multi-platform and they do notice the difference. What we are asking for is choice, I want to be able to not use virtual folders. I want to move my trash and junk to their own folders, which I can empty as I choose. I do not want my Inbox littered with emails I don't want to see. I simply don't care if I am doing it wrong, that is the way I and most others seem to do it. I want evolution to simply allow me to do it the same way, until they do I will continue with Thunderbird.

[bananenkasper (bananenkasper)]

There is nothing left to say!
Totally agree!

[Wadelius (wadelius)]

I agree as well. When I set up systems for others I am forced to install thunderbird because of this issue.

Is there no way to have a poll about this?

[Petr Leiman (petr-leiman)]

I do not see what is the problem with having Evo direct deleted messages into an IMAP folder. Please, can anyone explain how this is different from the action of moving the messages from one folder into another???

One can move messages into the IMAP Deleted Items (or whatever the name of it) folder _manually_ in the current implementation of Evo, but this is simply _does_not_make_sense! All other mail clients do this with a push of a button...

This problem is simply so obvious that it is beyond bizarre how this 'bug' could have persisted for 5 years. Especially in light of the fact that fixing it does not require writing any new code (ok, maybe 5 lines).

[Thea Barnes (tsbarnes)]

Just wanted to add, I appreciate Evolution doing things the "right way", but not having the option to have deleting move the message to the server's Trash folder (and allowing defining what folder to use as the trash) breaks Gmail's IMAP, since on Gmail IMAP marking a message as deleted then expunging the folder only removes the *label*, so those messages end up being saved in the "All Mail" instead of actually deleted. I'm definitely in favor of having the current behavior stay the default, but giving the option to do it as moving to a trash folder instead of marking as deleted.

[Jan (jan-timo-henrich-deactivatedaccount)]

OMG, this bug is about nine years old, and nothing happend yet - evolution is still messing up with IMAP and my googlemail-account.

I would _really do_ prefer, if evolution would leave me a choice how to handle junk and trash (vfolder vs. mapping the "real" folder).

Thanks in advance

[showgun (showgun)]

I have to agree it is all about freedom...
Ain't this what we are all about "freedom"

[ignasi (igp-oenus)]

I totally agree. I will never be able to use or recommend Evolution until this issue is solved.

[john sullivan (sullymandias)]

Why do people use "DELETE" as a means to archive emails? Because all I need to do is click the DELETE button, or press the DELETE key, to delete the message. I would be happy to archive my email differently, if it were even mildly convenient. In Evolution, to archive an email, I need to:

1. Right-click the email.
2. Select Move to Folder... (Steps 1. and 2. alternative is to select the email and press Shift-Ctrl-Y.)
3. Use mouse to click my archive folder in a popup window. (Alternatively, I can press down-arrow key multiple times to select my archive folder.)
4. Click the "Copy" button. (Alternatively, I can press enter key.)

If you are going to tell me to "DO IT RIGHT, ARCHIVE DON'T DELETE", I would respectfully ask you to provide me with a way to archive my message with a single key command and/or button press.

Given the fact that I DELETE (oops, I mean "archive") maybe a hundred emails a day, I will prefer to use Thunderbird for this single reason alone.

[Octavio Alvarez (alvarezp)]

[off-topic, since it this is more of a support response]

John Sullivan and others: When I used Evolution, I used search folders. I had a special search folder for the "unread" e-mails. When the e-mail was irrelevant, I just marked it as "read" using the keyboard shortcut. I think it was Ctrl+J.

As an added advantage, the search folder would also filter a lot of unimportant e-mails (like subscriptions). It didn't take much to set up, and it is a set-and-forget solution.

That way, the message is not deleted. It is still kept in a folder, even if it is the Inbox itself, it is better than deleting it, and if you use IMAP it will still appear in your webmail.

In Evo, "delete" does not mean "archive". It means "delete".

[/off-topic]

[Nigel Babu (nigelbabu)]

Since this patch has essentially been forwarded from the upstream bug tracker, I'm marking this bug as patch-forwarded-upstream.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package evolution - 2.32.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
evolution (2.32.0-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * Upstream release 2.32.0
    - Empty reply quotation for HTML messages (LP: #630566, #659513)
    - "Encrypt to self" by default on newly created mail (LP: #326979)
    - Backup settings uses unhelpful yes/no dialog (LP: #572985)
    - Can't drag email addresses to Contact List Editor (LP: #282530)
    - Contact List Editor calls wrong EDestination function (LP: #229187)
    - Allow normal, non-vFolder, Trash and Junk folder (LP: #13983, #64762)
      (LP: #135485, #280325, #365270)
    - Allow change of signature hash algorithm (LP: #381290, #381295, #635937)
    - Dialog for mark-all-read always mentions subfolders (LP: #608462)
    - Evolution allows deletion of default views (LP: #498040)
    - Add checks for event->comp_data != NULL (LP: #466415, #546952)
    - Properly free unused message infos periodically (LP: #507972)
    - Calendar compressed weekend print improvement (LP: #88926)
    - Attachment bar causes drawing issues in RTL locales (LP: #545459)
    - [PST] evolution crashed with SIGSEGV (LP: #471852)
    - Swap "Save" and "Save as Draft" accelerators in composer (LP: #424416)
    - Evolution hangs when formatting message - fixes part of it (LP: #175233)
      (LP: #327775)
    - Calendar Day view All Day events print improvements (LP: #88926)
    - Crash on a changed mail filter action removal (LP: #452921)
    - Do not block UI with publish-calendar messages (LP: #594289)
    - Duplicate mnemonic in meeting window (LP: #499418)
    - Hide variable used only with HAVE_LIBNOTIFY (LP: #594289)
  * debian/patches/02_fix_missing_include_for_composer.patch: refreshed
  * debian/patches/03_lpi.patch: refreshed
  * debian/patches/12_remove_not_recommended_for_top_posting.patch: updated.
    The "recommended" text is now a separate label, so removing that object
    entirely.
  * debian/patches/89_express.patch: dropped, applied upstream.
  * debian/patches/90_disable_deprecation_warning.patch: refreshed
  * debian/patches/91_add_u1_email_translations.patch: refreshed
  * debian/patches/91_git_additional_chinese_translations.patch: dropped
  * debian/patches/91_git_fix_e_shell_ref_counting.patch: dropped
  * debian/patches/91_git_fix_untranslatable_list_editor.patch: dropped
  * debian/patches/92_git_fix_proxy_ignore_hosts.patch: dropped
  * debian/patches/92_git_only_hide_signature_on_express.patch: dropped
  * debian/control: update Depends/Build-Depends of all e-d-s parts to 2.32
  * debian/control: libgdata was split out of e-d-s, so updating Build-Depends
    to use the external libgdata library.
  * debian/control: bump libgtkhtml Build-Depends to >= 1:3.31.90
  * debian/*.install: install plugins to /usr/lib/evolution/2.32, not 2.30
  * debian/rules: remove --disable-pilot-conduits, it's not a valid configure
    switch anymore
  * debian/evolution-dev.install: no longer install libeconduit.so
  * debian/control: update Build-Depends with new and updated requirements for
    2.32: adding libpango1.0-dev, libgail-dev, updating libglib2.0-dev,
    libgtk2.0-dev, gnome-icon-theme and libunique-dev
  *...

[Jochen Fahrner (jofa)]

Is it possible to install evolution (2.32.0-0ubuntu1) on Maverick?

[areteichi (areteichi)]

I pulled the package from Natty repository. Not an ideal solution but it seems to be working fine so far. I needed to update libgtkhtml-editor0 in addition.

[Jochen Fahrner (jofa)]

I now have upgraded to Natty, but I cannot find these settings for "Allow normal, non-vFolder, Trash and Junk folder". Where are these new settings?

[Leeq (leekyuh)]

Like Jochen said, this feature is still not supported. I tried with both IMAP and IMAP+ on Evolution 2.32.2. The mail server is Exchange 2010.

In help manual, it says "When you press Delete or click the Trash folder, your mail is not actually deleted, but is marked for deletion. Your email is recoverable until you have expunged your mail."
Also, "However, this is not true for the Trash folder on Exchange servers, which behaves just the same as it does in Outlook. It is a normal folder with actual messages in it. For more information about search folders, see Using Search Folders."

I was expecting to read how to move mails to "Deleted Items" folder when I press the delete key, but it only says to read about Search folders, which is irrelevant.

Right now, when I press the Delete key, the mail is simply marked as deleted and appears in the "virtual folder". Even after pressing F9(send/receive), I couldn't find the deleted mails in OWA(Outlook Web Access) or on my mobile phone's mail app.
In Mail Preferences, "Delete Mail" section does not have any relevant options. It has only options related to expunge behavior and empty trash on exit.

Sorry if I missed anything, but after investing fair amount of time, I could only conclude that this bug is not fixed.
This problem does not exist in Claws, Zimbra and Outlook.

[Jean-Christophe Baptiste (jc-baptiste)]

Simply, it has always been a show-stopper for me.

[Jochen Fahrner (jofa)]

Don't mind about it. Evolution is history. Canonical has decided to make Thunderbird the default mail client, and they did it right. The evolution of evolution got stuck in the last century. If someone is argueing "this is the way how imap is designed to work", he is not willing to make his piece of software user-friendly. This is a point which makes Apple so successfull. The user experience has to have the highest priority, not some old fashioned technical arguments.

[Ballock (ballock)]

Oh, jofa, man you are so in the dark. "Old fashioned technical arguments" is what your Linux is built upon. On open standards, which are being adhered to. If you want to have user experience to have higher priority than old fashioned technical arguments, go to Microsoft. They broke a great deal of standards just to have feature X, thus helping the user experience.

Also, note that the problem here is not with Evolution not adhering to standards, but Exchange violating standards.

[Jochen Fahrner (jofa)]

Boleslaw, you misunderstand. A protocol has nothing to do with a user interface. These are two distinct things.
Look at the POP-protocol: it has no folders, it has no trash and it is not designed to leave mail on the server. But many mail clients have local folders, local trash, and leave mail on the server. The protocol is only the transport mechanism for mail, it has nothing to do with the way a mail client offers mail to the user.

Now look at IMAP. Many old clients used it similar as POP, they fetched mail from the server as they did with POP. Folders were only local in these old clients. Modern clients work different, they leave mail on the server, they use folders on the server, and since trash is only a normal folder, they can move deleted mails to the trash folder on the server. Why should they restrict the user interface to the technical limits of the underlying protocol? There is no reason to do that.

[Ballock (ballock)]

Again, as you noted - there are clients doing that, so this is not a technical limitation of the IMAP protocol. I admit I have not studied the RFC for IMAP, perhaps it says that the only accepted way to delete mail is to mark them as deleted instead of moving it to the Trash folder.

Be it this way or the other - please do not think of "technical arguments" as something old-fashioned or something that stands in the way of progress. What we need are well-designed and well-defined standards that would boost the progress. Now imagine how would modern email access look like if there was no IMAP nor POP and all the email providers created their own "user-friendly" protocol for doing that.

[Grzegorz G. (grzesiek1e5)]

This problem has returned in Ubuntu 12.10 - Evolution's account options were simplified and there is no place to set default junk or trash folder (only drafts and sent).