Short version:
I think all sorts of users need an easy way to make any mailbox
list either or both of:
Sender
Recipient
There are a number of reasons for this, as I explore below.
In "Re: Subfolders of send folder" on 27 July, Bert Garcia wrote:
> I created subfolders of the send folder in the Local Folders for
> archiving purposes, this was my main account folders are lean and
> mean.
>
> IE. send1999, send2000, send2001 under send
>
> If I click on the top level send folder, I see the recepient, when I
> click on the lower level send1999, I see sender instead. Is there a
> way to fix this, does the top level send have a special bit set on
> somewhere?
I think it is vital that the user can easily configure multiple
mailboxes to show the Recipient so that these mailboxes can be used to
store sent mail. Perhaps it just needs to be another column which can
be turned on - with potentially the Sender showing as well.
Over the years, we all build up a huge quantity of sent mail. Some of
it may be a meg or two per message, and we may want to sort the sent
mail into mulitple mailboxes for a variety of reasons, including:
Separate mailboxes by recipient, or business/personal etc.
Separate mailboxes per year, or month, to make searching faster and
better targetted.
To keep bodgy messages somewhere else - like those we sent in
error.
To put the really big ones somewhere where they don't clutter up
the ordinary mailboxes which we often want to search to find
something we sent in the past.
With N4.x, I use the "When sending a newsgroup message, automatically"
option to point to another mailbox where I keep large files and previous
year's email. That and the main one for "When sending a mail message,
automatically" are the only options for making N4.x display the "To:
line in place of the "From:" in the mailbox index.
When I first looked I thought Mozilla doesn't have the Usenet one - but
actually it is in a separate section of "Edit > Mail/News Account
Settings". So if you don't send things to Usenet, that can be used as a
pointer to make another mailbox show the Recipient.
There is a workaround to make an arbitrary number of "Sent mail" folders
with Mozilla: Created a bodgy mail server entry (the "New Account"
button). It doesn't have to be a functional one, I think - just invent
some silly host name for an IMAP server - bogus.com worked fine for me.
Then set its "Sent mail" mailbox to be any mailbox for which you want to
store Sent mail. I have just done this and can make it point to any
mailbox I like in my main IMAP mailbox system. I assume it works on
local mailboxes too.
This need for multiple sent mail folders easily selectable by the user
is something which should be pretty easy to fix with an extra column
option for each mailbox. Indeed it might be as easy as getting rid of a
test somewhere for whether the mailbox is a normal one or the one for
Sent mail - and enabling both Recipient as options in all cases, with
Recipient on by default and Sender off in the official Sent mailbox.
The general ability to show both Recipient and Sender is necessary in a
situation where people have all sorts of mail in mailboxes. Since people
have more than one email address for all their roles in life, it makes
sense not to assume that all their sent mail has their current email
address as the Sender.
The value of this to users is really large, I think. As far as I know,
many, most or all mail clients fail dismally in this regard. (The
Postman web-mail program recognises messages sent by the user and
displays the Recipient in the Sender column, prefixed by "To: " - which
automatically provides the functionality of making any mailbox into a
good place to store sent mail.)
<big-wish> Actually, what's really needed is a way that a user can
easily link from any sent mail to any message it was a reply to, and
vice versa, no matter where the messages are moved aroud the system -
including years later. Its a simple user requirement to keep a track of
correspondence, but not at all easily implemented. There would have to
be some kind of easily scrambled central database which always knew of
where messages were moved to - both sent and recieved. I guess an easier
way would be to add a header into a message when it was replied to,
stating the exact time and date. This would enable a search of the Sent
mail to find the reply. </big-wish>
- Robin
