Bug 380120

Summary: Usability: Typing CTRL-A after selecting a folder should select all mails, not all folders
Product: [Applications] kmail2 Reporter: Urs Joss <tschenturs>
Component: commands and actionsAssignee: kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: wishlist CC: allergy, arthur, kloecker, tterranigma
Priority: NOR    
Version: 5.5.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: screenshot keybindings

Description Urs Joss 2017-05-23 13:51:23 UTC
Hi everyone

Probably a matter of taste, but let me put my whish here for discussion.

I managed to delete most of my email after mouse-clicking the trash folder and typing CTRL-A to seemingly select all mail within the folder, followed by my shortcut for 'delete all'. I know, my fault, no discussion about that.

However, following the principle of least surprise with my mindset, I would expect kmail to select all folders (I don't know a usecase I'd have for that). Id expect it to select all mail within the folder. Desipte the fact that the focus was in the folder panel and not in the mail list panel.

My to ç - thanks for all your effort and achievements
Urs
Comment 1 Urs Joss 2017-05-23 13:53:14 UTC
As I did not state it explicitly. What happened after my click-orgy: All folders were selected, my short-cut for deleting all started to delete mail from all folders...

Luckily I have a sufficiently good backup process :-)
Comment 2 Nikolaos Kakouros 2017-05-24 16:20:45 UTC
I cannot reproduce that with kmail 5.5.1 on arch linux. I click a folder, then ctrl+a and all mails are selected.
Comment 3 Urs Joss 2017-05-28 20:20:49 UTC
KMail seems to remember the email you have previously selected in a particular folder. If you click the folder in the folder view, the previously selected email becomes active and the focus shifts from the folder panel to the email list panel. Typing ctrl+a does the 'expected' and selects all emails within the selected folder.

If - for some reason - there is no previously selected email, kmail leaves the focus on the folder panel. Typing ctrl+a selects all folders instead of all emails within that folder.

I guess I'd rephrase the title of this bug report to something like: 'kmail should select the first mail in a folder and set the focus to the email list panel if the user clicks on the folder and kmail does not have a previously selected email'. Do you agree? And what exact terms describe the scenario best?

Thanks and cheers
Urs
Comment 4 Urs Joss 2017-05-29 03:42:17 UTC
Created attachment 105749 [details]
screenshot keybindings
Comment 5 Urs Joss 2017-05-29 03:45:55 UTC
Comment on attachment 105749 [details]
screenshot keybindings

Sorry, I intended to add this screen shot to another bug, not this one. Any chance somebody could delete it here (I seem to not have the rights to do so)?
Comment 6 Urs Joss 2017-06-05 08:02:55 UTC
It frequently occurs in the Trash folder. And that's where I usually would want to hit CTRL-A and delete all :-(
Comment 7 Ingo Klöcker 2017-08-28 17:38:38 UTC
I run into the same issue whenever I want to clear my spam folder, i.e. once a day. In the past I could select the folder and then Ctrl+A Shift+Delete to delete all spam messages. Now I have to select one of the spam messages before I'm able to delete all of them.
Comment 8 Amand Tihon 2017-09-04 09:35:31 UTC
Using Kmail 5.5.2 from Opensuse Leap 42.3 repositories: typing CTRL-A will either select nothing at all, select the content of the mail in preview pane, or select all mails in the header pane as it used to do.

Shortcut hasn't been touched and is still configured to select all messages.

Not really sure if it is the same bug, though, as I never got all folders to be selected.
Comment 9 Urs Joss 2022-07-08 10:08:51 UTC
I stumbled upon this old bug and retested it with kmail-5.20.3 (22.04.3). It works as I'd expect it to work: 

- clicking on a folder that contains emails from which previously I had already selected one, the focus will shift to the mail list panel and CTRL-A will select all email
- clicking on a folder where previously I had not selected any email, the focus will stay on the folder list panel. But now, CTRL-A doesn't have any effect (as opposed to in 2017, where it was selecting all folders).

So all Good, I'd like to close the issue. Thanks to all working on kmail and kde/plasma.