Re: [Evolution] Moving an email creates a duplicate in thetrash folder (?!)

["Patrick O'Callaghan" <poc usb ve>]

re2823 Safe-mail net wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>
> Apparently from: evolution-list-bounces gnome org
> To: evolution-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Evolution] Moving an email creates a duplicate in thetrash        folder (?!)
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:56:10 -0400
>
> > On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 15:37 +0000, re2823 Safe-mail net wrote:
> > > Could someone please confirm that I'm not losing my mind. I've
> > > discovered that moving emails between folders in evolution creates
> > > duplicates in the trash folder. Here's a recipe to reproduce the
> > > problem:
> > >
> > > Take one fresh evolution installation version 2.6.3 on a clean debian
> > > etch (no .evolution or .gconf/apps/evolution folders), start evolution,
> > > create a new folder (call it anything you like) to archive your emails
> > > into, then move the "Getting started" welcome email into your archive
> > > folder. Check the inbox to make sure the welcome email is no longer
> > > there, check your archive folder to make sure that the welcome mail IS
> > > there, now look in the trash folder. There's a duplicate of the welcome email.
> > >
> > > Huh? Is this unique to my parallel universe, or can someone else
> > > reproduce the same?
> > This is correct and is the way Evo is supposed to work. Briefly, on IMAP
> > servers there is no "move" primitive so Evo has to copy the message and
> > remove the original. "Removing" in IMAP is a 2-step process: mark as
> > deleted, and then expunge the folder. This means you can undo deletes as
> > long as you haven't expunged.
> >
> > The same may apply to Exchange servers; I don't know.
> >
> > In any case, all you need to do is periodically hit Ctrl-E (Folder
> > ->Expunge) or File->Empty Trash (equivalent to Expunge on all folders).
>
> Thanks for that Patrick. Only one question: your answer talks
> about IMAP servers, while I was originally talking about my
> local (file) mail-store. Do you know if local (file) mail stores
> are supposed to behave the same way?

It could be of course be done differently for local folders, but it 
would seem to be more natural to keep the same behaviour, in line with 
the Principle of Least Astonishment, given that Evo already does it for 
IMAP. However I don't really know the answer to this. Note that local 
folders are not all the same, since they can be (at least) mboxes (one 
file per folder) or maildirs (one file per message), and that could 
affect the answer. Why don't you experiment and tell us?

> At least I now understand why I have up to ten (10) duplicates of
> certain mails in my local folders - I've moved an important mail
> into an local archive folder, later discovered that same email in
> the trash (a duplicate, but I didn't realize that then), thought
> "Shit, what's that really important email doing in the trash,
> undelete it, quick" and so on, and so on.
>
> Now to spend a day or two, trying to work out how to get rid of
> all my duplicate emails... :-(

Evo has no tools for this I'm afraid, but several people have posted 
scripts for doing duplicate elimination. Google is your friend.

poc