Ubuntu
evolution package

can't delete messages in trash

Bug #21653 reported by Alexander van Loon
42
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Evolution
Invalid
Medium
evolution (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Wishlist
Sebastien Bacher

Bug Description

I'm using the Breezy preview release in combination with Evolution 2.4.0

I was amazed when I discovered that I can't delete e-mail messages in the trash,
i.e. delete e-mail messages permanently. I simply go to the trash, right click a
message and choose delete, nothing happens? I'm aware that there is an option in
Evolution's preferences to empty the trash folders on exit, but that's simply
not what I want, I want to decide which messages located in the trash I want to
delete and which not. Evolution keeps surprising me, it's probably the most
advanced groupware suite/e-mail client available on Linux, but it lacks the most
basic things such as autodownloading of messages at startup (I found out that it
will do that when you enable the option to automatically check for messages
every x minutes, but to me that's a totally different option), and deleting
messages from the trash. If the option to delete messages from does exist I'm
very sorry for reporting this, I took some time to figure it out but I couldn't
find such an option.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316375: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316375

See original description
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Thanks for your bug. What is wrong with that? You delete the files you don't
want. The trash is here to allow you to undo some errors, not to act an another
mailbox where you can tag, move, delete, etc message. Anyway I've forwarded your
request upstream to get their opinion on it:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316375

Revision history for this message
Alexander van Loon (avanloon) wrote :

What is wrong with it is that most users expect to be able to permanently delete
a message from the trash, because that's what they're used to because most other
e-mail clients have that feature. In other e-mail clients you delete a message,
it then goes to the trash, you then delete the message in the trash and it's
permanently deleted.

Of course the trash exists so that users can undelete messages which they don't
want to be deleted. But if they are sure that a message can be deleted, they
can't delete it permanently from the trash, the delete button doesn't work so
eventually the messages in the trash just keep sitting there forever with no way
to get rid of them, unless they enable some option to empty the trash on exit.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

you can use Folder, Expunge to flush the trash or press Ctrl-E too

Revision history for this message
Alexander van Loon (avanloon) wrote :

I've been speaking English for a long time, but this is the first time I've
heard of the word "expunge". I don't understand why the Evolution dev's want to
be so special and make it difficult for the user. The user will think that when
he right-clicks a message in the trash, a chooses delete, that the message will
be permanently deleted. Instead the user will have to choose "expunge" from the
folder menu (which is a strange place for a common task) or remember the Crtl-e
shortcut. I'll discuss this further in the upstream bugreport.

Revision history for this message
Alexander van Loon (avanloon) wrote :

I've been using Evolution for a longer time now and I'm more familiar with how it works. Now that I read my own bugreport again, I don't think it really is a problem. The upstream bug is closed, so I think it's ok to close this bug report.

Changed in evolution:
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Thank you; note than upstream still has http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=301388 open about that

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in evolution:
importance: Unknown → Medium
status: Invalid → Unknown
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in evolution:
status: Unknown → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Peter McGrath (g-sales-systemsmanager-net) wrote :

I have deleted messages from my inbox

They are moved to the Trash folder.

I can not delete the files in the trash folder at all, currently it is sitting at 8500 messages and attachments and is eating up space.

I need to empty this folder Expunge does not work.

Empty folder option does not work either

Any help would be appreciated....

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