Wrong "unread" count for Drafts

[ajayrockrock]

Hello,

I migrated from a Courier-IMAP setup via imapsync. Everything worked great but my users have a minor issue in that the "Drafts" folder has like 20 unread messages in the folder list. And first off there aren't ANY messages in the folder and the option to "mark this folder as read" is grayed out. To clear it out I've tried:

1 - composing a new message
2 - saving it as draft (the unread count now becomes 21)
3 - going to the Drafts folder and marking the message as "unread"
4 - when I right-click on the folder I can now select "mark this folder as read" but clicking on it doesn't do anything
5 - I move the message into the trash and it subtracts the count and it becomes 20 unread messages again... *sigh*

Like I said, not a MAJOR show-stopper issue but a minor annoyance. I don't know enough about Zimbra's underlying structure to figure out how to solve this one. Is the unread count stored somewhere like in the SQL database that I can reset it by hand?

Thanks,
Ajay

[phoenix]

That's caused by your IMAP client. Have you connected to the server with something like Thunderbird? If you have you need to connect using the IMAP client and try compacting the drafts folder.

[ajayrockrock]

awesome. I connected with thunderbird, marked folder as read, and that fixed it.

Thanks!

--Ajay

[amarshall]

I've seen this remedy for the drafts folder stuck in 'unread' message mode before, and it always seems to work for others.

However, it doesn't work for me. We are running ZCS 5.0.15_GA_2852.RHEL4 NE and I'm using Tbird 2.0.0.16. This has continued from our first install of ZCS about a year and a half ago. I have tried compacting folders in Tbird several times with no result.

All of the users of our mail server have the problem of the drafts folder reporting that messages are unread when they are read. At times it also reports the wrong number of messages, although this is not true now in my mailbox.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[ewilen]

I'm not sure I've seen the same problem, but when I saw something similar I found a thread that recommended emptying Trash via the web client. It worked for me.

[amarshall]

Thanks, tried that too. Still bold Drafts folder reporting unread messages. As someone else mentioned, it isn't really a big deal but it is annoying that it doesn't function properly for us.

[Rich Graves]

Expanding on what phoenix said on 6/15:

The IMAP protocol, which Thunderbird is speaking, has two separate commands for "flag for deletion" and "expunge." Back in the day when each mailbox (or folder) was one large file, expunging messages from the middle of a mailbox was a very expensive operation, because it meant rewriting the whole file.

Thunderbird calls the expunge operation "Compact Folder."

Nowadays, most email servers use some variation of file-per-message or database storage, so the original technical reason for the split delete/expunge process no longer applies. Nowadays, pretty much everyone considers "Move to Trash" a far more user-friendly paradigm than mark for deletion/expunge. But the IMAP protocol remains the same. There simply is no "Move to Trash" function. IMAP requires you to copy the message, then mark deleted in the original folder, then expunge the original folder.

The discrepancy in message counts in Drafts (and sometimes elsewhere) is due to Zimbra web's counting, but not showing, messages in the "deleted but not yet expunged" state.

Zimbra web has no way to expunge deleted messages because like most enterprise packages, it has moved entirely to the "move to Trash," "Drafts instantly move to Sent" paradigm. Any cleanup of expunged messages needs to be done by an IMAP client. Thunderbird does "lazy" expunge, only after a certain amount of time or messages have passed.