Default e-mail address for replies
I have a rather strange problem. I have 8 e-mail accounts in my Thunderbird, and I have 5 different "inboxes". So I have a main one that pulls from one account (we'll call this account #1), then my second one pulls from 3 accounts, the third pulls from 2 accounts, and the 4th and 5th each pull from a single account. I did this by using the Advanced button under Account Settings -> Server Settings to group the e-mail accounts such that they are associated with a certain inbox. There are no problems with e-mail getting to the right place when downloading them. I also use Get Selected Mails and Manually Sort Folders. The only other add-ons are Lightning and Smiley Fixer.
In most cases, when I click "reply" to a message, it will show the "from" field as the e-mail account to which the message was addressed, but this is not always the case.
For instance, on a message sent to account #1, if I just do "reply" it will insert the proper "from" address. If I select "reply all" to the same message, I get a different address - one from the 3rd inbox group, and not one I want to use! The address is uses is not the last one that was set up either, I have added the 4th and 5th inboxes since then.
Sometimes, when I am looking at a message in my second inbox, and I click to reply to a message sent to account A within that inbox, it will flip the "from" to account B.
I haven't summed up all of the issues I'm seeing, but they are all very similar. I'm sure that if I went through all the iterations I could figure out a pattern but I don't have the time. I've looked in the config file and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. In mail.accountmanager.accounts setting, the order of the accounts seems a bit random and intermingled. The main inbox is the first one, the second is one e-mail from the 2nd inbox, the third is an e-mail from the 3rd inbox, the fourth and fifth are e-mails from the 2nd inbox, the sixth is an e-mail from the 3rd inbox, the seventh and eighth don't seem to have an ID associated with them, and the ninth and tenth are the 4th and 5th accounts - the most recently set up.
I'm wondering if I have to just re-install Thunderbird and set all this up again from scratch because something seems seriously hosed here. The only thing that looks correct is that account 1 is ID 1 and server 1, and that is set as the default account in every way I can see but it doesn't work like that. All the other accounts/ID/server numbers are out of order, which I'm sure doesn't matter.
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I think this just uncovered a huge ball of wax type of issue. I have a feeling that this might have to do with the way I am transporting my "inboxes" from point to point.
The way it should be, account1, 12, and 13 are in their own inbox.
Account 4, 5, and 8 are grouped (4 is primary)
Account 10 and 11 are grouped (10 is primary)
In going through several message source codes (by the way I do not see a "other actions", I have to go view -> message source)
So if I look at the code for a message received into account 11, some of the code ties it to account11, and other messages are tied to account13
Similarly some messages to account10 have code that ties them to account10 and others to account12.
As I'm going through all my messages, I am now seeing the pattern.
When I am at home, and I receive an e-mail, the key ties it to the account number for which is it set up within that system. When I reply to this message from home, it works fine. When I transport that message to my work, then try to reply to that message, it sees the account key in the e-mail and uses that as the 'from', but this account key is linked to a different account.
I still haven't been able to figure out why there was a difference between the from address for a reply vs reply-to-all but now I can't recreate that either.
This may have to do with the fact that between when I first posed this question and now, I went on vacation and put all my e-mail onto a laptop which previously did not have TB on it, then transferred that back to my home computer when I returned, then back to work. So that my have reset the issue and caused the other ones that I am now seeing.
So now it's a big fat mess. I think the only way to fix this would be to go into the config editor of each computer and manually change the account ids so that they were synchronized on each machine, and then make sure that each machine had the exact same accounts set up. I have an additional 3 e-mail addresses on my home PC that I do not have on my work PC, and 2 of the work PC accounts I do not bring over to my home PC.
I don't see how this would easily get fixed unless I had all the settings on both PCs fully synchronized, instead of just synchronizing the mail folders. That seems to be causing the problem. On top of that, there is no way to fix the e-mails that I currently have, because the account keys are in the code. I would have to extract all the messages into individual .eml files using something like mbox to eml (which I have used before) and then manually editing the key in each message. Ugh.
What a mess!
Would using identities instead solve this? I don't think so...
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2¢…
I let each account use its own Inbox, and use View|Folders|Unread to locate new messages.
It is important to me to know which account a message arrived in; moving a message to another account's Inbox clouds the issue too much for my liking.
A Saved Search can be used to create one or more virtual composite Inboxes if you prefer some form of grouping or collation of accounts.
In my case, it is not so important. I have several e-mail address to which I don't ever reply (and don't want to) but they are related to a particular group. Thus why I group them as I do. But thanks for your 2c.
FYI opening prefs.js in Notepad and doing a series of find/replace steps took 3 minutes and worked perfectly
I am glad your happy with your result. Personally I think your setting yourself up for a catastrophic failure down the road. I would not recommend doing what you have done to anyone.
Just be sure to mention your bizarre setup in any future support request. The volunteer who puts their hand up to assist you will be in for a challenge and in fairness should be aware of that going in.
What kind of catastrophe do you forsee? I did nothing that I could forsee to cause a future failure. If it was going to fail, wouldn't it fail right away?
All I did was change the account numbers from accountX to accountY in the prefs.js file, and I did so on a "replace all" basis. I could have just as easily done this line by line in the config editor but that would have been extremely tedious and prone to failure due to missing one particular reference.
Also I might point out that while this may be a particular situation that is not common (transferring mail folders between 2 separate instances of TB) I did this every day, all the time with Outlook and I had no problem. I think it is a design flaw to have accounts referenced in such a way that they would not be globally recognized from one instance to the next.
If I had a system crash, but thankfully I had backup up my mail folders (but only my mail folders, and not my entire profile folder) then I would have to set up all the mail account again and then import my mail into those folders somehow. If the accounts weren't set up in the exact same order, then one would be presented with the same weird issue that I have encountered.
Now maybe that would only be the result of a specific set of circumstances. But I still find it bad technique to disassociate an account (an e-mail address) with the account number in the config file. The id# is associated with the e-mail address, then the account# is associated with the id# (and server#) so I guess part of me understands the rationale, and it would be certainly more challenging from a programming perspective to solve this.
I never expected this kind of effect.
And I still cannot see how changing account3 to account50 - throughout the entire prefs.js file - would cause a future catastrophe. I would very much be interested to hear why you feel this is a possibility.
Outlook pulls mails into disparate parts when they are stored. The header is stored seperately from the body with is seperated from the attachments, it is a file format that is prone to failure and corruption to the point Micxrisift had to release a tool to "repair" pst files.
However what you can do with impunity in outlook does not necessarily work in Thunderbird as you have observed. The reverse is also true. If it is a flaw or weakness is irrelevant to this discussion. It exists and works the way it does.
Oh I don't think your changes today will be the issue, it is your trying to make portable something that is not and maintaining different accounts in two installations in the process that I think will eventually bite you.
Your using a portable disk as a replacement for a decent IMAP server and two mail accounts. A bit like using a sneakernet network to print documents. It works, for now, if nothing changes, if nothing fails. But as your usage is so far outside the "norm" expect issues on update as the developers will not be expecting such a use case.
Yeah corruption with outlook among a host of other PITA issues drove me away from outlook. the main one being the increase in failure rate as the .pst increased in size, which was a major problem at work.
You have a point that a software change down the road might affect my portability scheme. I guess as long as they don't change how an account# is tied to the id# and/or server#, then I have no problem.
So let me ask you this. Can I have TB open with multiple profiles at the same time? If I can, then this would be a solution I would be happy with. Each group of e-mail accounts would be under a separate profile. Or, would I be able to have multiple instances of TB open, each operating independently on a separate profile? That would be less desirable, but certainly more robust in terms of eliminating the issue of future updates.