Changed state doesn't stick
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Just a follow-up: Even though shutting down/restarting the app yesterday did leave my read messages marked as such, this morning I came back to the app and those same Gmail messages have come back again as unread. On can only conclude it does make some effort to persist the read state, but that gets clobbered when re-downloading the mailbox. I suspect it *never* tells the server that messages have changed state, and the client just goes with whatever the server says. How long has email existed for? Shouldn't this be a solved problem by now?
dandy72 wrote:
How long has email existed for? Shouldn't this be a solved problem by now?
Microsoft moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform... :)
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Microsoft...please fix this. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? I'm using the "new" Outlook client that is now bundled nowadays with a default Windows 10 installation. It's much better than the previous generic email client that was included, but this in particular bothers me. The client downloads the content of my inbox. Some messages are marked as read, others as unread. I manually mark everything as read. I don't even shut down the app, I leave it running in the background all the time. When the mailbox is refreshed, the messages that I explicitly marked as read revert back to unread. It's like it's not even relaying the fact that messages are now read back to the server, so the refresh undoes my changes. THIS IS ONLY FOR GMAIL ACCOUNTS. I'm also using the same client to fetch accounts from hotmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, and those all work correctly. Only the Gmail accounts exhibit this behavior. Has anyone else seen this? [Edit] I suspect if I go to the actual gmail site and mark the unread items as read, the local account *might* fix itself (I haven't tried it yet), but the whole point of having a client that can manage multiple mailboxes is to avoid using the web interface (yuck!). [Edit 2] WTH...if I shut down the app and reload it, it now remembers I've changed messages from unread to read. So, it doesn't bother persisting that until you shut down, and refreshing the mailbox takes precedence over what the client is tracking...?
My god yes. It's hateful. I've taken to deleting messages as soon as I read them just to force the issue.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Microsoft...please fix this. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? I'm using the "new" Outlook client that is now bundled nowadays with a default Windows 10 installation. It's much better than the previous generic email client that was included, but this in particular bothers me. The client downloads the content of my inbox. Some messages are marked as read, others as unread. I manually mark everything as read. I don't even shut down the app, I leave it running in the background all the time. When the mailbox is refreshed, the messages that I explicitly marked as read revert back to unread. It's like it's not even relaying the fact that messages are now read back to the server, so the refresh undoes my changes. THIS IS ONLY FOR GMAIL ACCOUNTS. I'm also using the same client to fetch accounts from hotmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, and those all work correctly. Only the Gmail accounts exhibit this behavior. Has anyone else seen this? [Edit] I suspect if I go to the actual gmail site and mark the unread items as read, the local account *might* fix itself (I haven't tried it yet), but the whole point of having a client that can manage multiple mailboxes is to avoid using the web interface (yuck!). [Edit 2] WTH...if I shut down the app and reload it, it now remembers I've changed messages from unread to read. So, it doesn't bother persisting that until you shut down, and refreshing the mailbox takes precedence over what the client is tracking...?
I found the best he solution to that and all the other New Outlook issues is to revert back to the old version.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth. To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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I solved this with... Mozilla Thunderbird Mail client: Thunderbird — Free Your Inbox. — Thunderbird[^] It really does work very nice. I know that the outlook client is "right there" inside win10 and I got trapped by it for a while too. However, I finally just went ahead and installed Thunderbird and was much happier. Very easy to setup and I have something like 7 or 8 email boxes (with various domains) and they are all managed very nicely. Check out this video I made of an issue[^] where the cursor in Outlook client is an I-bar even when it is over the scrollbar. I'm not sure if MS ever fixed it.
I've used Thunderbird on my Linux for a while. It's a very sub-par experience compared to Outlook. Its UX is pretty terrible and unintuitive. Its search capabilities are confusing and often seem to just not work correctly. And last time I checked (a couple of years ago or so) - it was broken on Wayland (there was a known issue that hadn't been addressed for a long time, even though Wayland has already become the default on some distributions, like PopOS 22.04). It's unfortunate but free alternatives to desktop applications, especially complex ones, always seem to lack significantly. Can't really blame the developers working nights and weekends for free, but I wish people were more open to actually paying for software on Linux. I believe it would have really helped the ecosystem. Donations and corporate sponsorship are simply not enough. At least for desktop.
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Microsoft...please fix this. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? I'm using the "new" Outlook client that is now bundled nowadays with a default Windows 10 installation. It's much better than the previous generic email client that was included, but this in particular bothers me. The client downloads the content of my inbox. Some messages are marked as read, others as unread. I manually mark everything as read. I don't even shut down the app, I leave it running in the background all the time. When the mailbox is refreshed, the messages that I explicitly marked as read revert back to unread. It's like it's not even relaying the fact that messages are now read back to the server, so the refresh undoes my changes. THIS IS ONLY FOR GMAIL ACCOUNTS. I'm also using the same client to fetch accounts from hotmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, and those all work correctly. Only the Gmail accounts exhibit this behavior. Has anyone else seen this? [Edit] I suspect if I go to the actual gmail site and mark the unread items as read, the local account *might* fix itself (I haven't tried it yet), but the whole point of having a client that can manage multiple mailboxes is to avoid using the web interface (yuck!). [Edit 2] WTH...if I shut down the app and reload it, it now remembers I've changed messages from unread to read. So, it doesn't bother persisting that until you shut down, and refreshing the mailbox takes precedence over what the client is tracking...?
I tried the new Outlook for about 30 minutes before I gave up because of the bugs. I was using it in a corporate setting with an Exchange server backend. It still had issues with refresh, loading, displaying, etc. I provided MS my feedback that it was crap software and I would not use it unless forced to.
Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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Microsoft...please fix this. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? I'm using the "new" Outlook client that is now bundled nowadays with a default Windows 10 installation. It's much better than the previous generic email client that was included, but this in particular bothers me. The client downloads the content of my inbox. Some messages are marked as read, others as unread. I manually mark everything as read. I don't even shut down the app, I leave it running in the background all the time. When the mailbox is refreshed, the messages that I explicitly marked as read revert back to unread. It's like it's not even relaying the fact that messages are now read back to the server, so the refresh undoes my changes. THIS IS ONLY FOR GMAIL ACCOUNTS. I'm also using the same client to fetch accounts from hotmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, and those all work correctly. Only the Gmail accounts exhibit this behavior. Has anyone else seen this? [Edit] I suspect if I go to the actual gmail site and mark the unread items as read, the local account *might* fix itself (I haven't tried it yet), but the whole point of having a client that can manage multiple mailboxes is to avoid using the web interface (yuck!). [Edit 2] WTH...if I shut down the app and reload it, it now remembers I've changed messages from unread to read. So, it doesn't bother persisting that until you shut down, and refreshing the mailbox takes precedence over what the client is tracking...?
I am amazed at anyone still using MS or Google for email. That said I understand the reluctance to change email address. As a novice in the world of programming and understanding OS's perhaps I do not grasp the issue. Any way I made the switch to Proton Mail FREE and for 4 years now only one spam email with tons of ways to protect your address
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I found the best he solution to that and all the other New Outlook issues is to revert back to the old version.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth. To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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I am amazed at anyone still using MS or Google for email. That said I understand the reluctance to change email address. As a novice in the world of programming and understanding OS's perhaps I do not grasp the issue. Any way I made the switch to Proton Mail FREE and for 4 years now only one spam email with tons of ways to protect your address
Choroid wrote:
perhaps I do not grasp the issue.
I'm leaning in that direction. My complaint had to do with bugs in this specific client app, for email specifically coming from Gmail. Probably because (I'm guessing) Gmail is using IMAP, whereas others are probably using POP3/SMTP or MS's own Exchange protocol. It's a protocol-specific implementation bug in Outlook. Nothing to do with the need to change an email address. Nothing to do with the amount of spam I get. Nothing to do with the need to protect my address.
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I've used Thunderbird on my Linux for a while. It's a very sub-par experience compared to Outlook. Its UX is pretty terrible and unintuitive. Its search capabilities are confusing and often seem to just not work correctly. And last time I checked (a couple of years ago or so) - it was broken on Wayland (there was a known issue that hadn't been addressed for a long time, even though Wayland has already become the default on some distributions, like PopOS 22.04). It's unfortunate but free alternatives to desktop applications, especially complex ones, always seem to lack significantly. Can't really blame the developers working nights and weekends for free, but I wish people were more open to actually paying for software on Linux. I believe it would have really helped the ecosystem. Donations and corporate sponsorship are simply not enough. At least for desktop.
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Choroid wrote:
perhaps I do not grasp the issue.
I'm leaning in that direction. My complaint had to do with bugs in this specific client app, for email specifically coming from Gmail. Probably because (I'm guessing) Gmail is using IMAP, whereas others are probably using POP3/SMTP or MS's own Exchange protocol. It's a protocol-specific implementation bug in Outlook. Nothing to do with the need to change an email address. Nothing to do with the amount of spam I get. Nothing to do with the need to protect my address.