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Is there a way to restore one or more emails to New status

  • 6 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by Matt

Tom Gordon
Tom Gordon
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Occasionally, after downloading new emails and before I can read them, something will happen to cause Thunderbird to close/restart. When Thunderbird restarts, the 'New" status indicator has been removed. It would be nice to turn it back on. For example, if I had downloaded messages for the previous 7 days, I could simply go into the inbox and mark the past 7 days emails as new. There are other scenarios, but in all cases I would like to be able to reinstate the New Status.

Occasionally, after downloading new emails and before I can read them, something will happen to cause Thunderbird to close/restart. When Thunderbird restarts, the 'New" status indicator has been removed. It would be nice to turn it back on. For example, if I had downloaded messages for the previous 7 days, I could simply go into the inbox and mark the past 7 days emails as new. There are other scenarios, but in all cases I would like to be able to reinstate the New Status.

All Replies (6)

christ1
christ1
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Right-click a message in the thread pane - Mark - As Unread

Tom Gordon
Tom Gordon Question owner
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christ1 said
Right-click a message in the thread pane - Mark - As Unread

Thanks for responding but Unread and New are not synonymous. A message can be unread but not new. A message cannot be both new and read.

Matt
Matt
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TampaTom said

christ1 said
Right-click a message in the thread pane - Mark - As Unread

Thanks for responding but Unread and New are not synonymous. A message can be unread but not new. A message cannot be both new and read.

Correct, but the flag is actually unseen, and the mail has been seen, even if only momentarily so it is no longer unseen.

Tom Gordon
Tom Gordon Question owner
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Matt, thanks for the response, but I'm afraid it was a little too cryptic. You lost me on the seen/unseen stuff. Maybe I didn't ask the question correctly.

  • After I download some new messages, they have the yellow dot/flag immediately to the left of the subject in the message listing in the inbox. This makes the messages I have not looked at stand out from the previously existing messages.
  • Then, something happens to Thunderbird before I complete looking at the new messages. (computer reboots, etc)
  • The next time I start Thunderbird, the new messages are no longer flagged with the yellow dot, which makes it harder to identify them. All I want to do is to be able to turn the "New" flag back on.
christ1
christ1
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The next time I start Thunderbird, the new messages are no longer flagged with the yellow dot, which makes it harder to identify them.

I don't really see much benefit of 'New' over 'Unread'.

something will happen to cause Thunderbird to close/restart.

I'd say this is your real problem, and if I were you, I'd rather try to fix that.

Matt
Matt
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Read/ unread is one thing. Seen/unseen is yet another and in no real way linked to read/unread.

Unseen is a flag defined in the RFC that imap email servers implement and while Thunderbird does this for pop mail. The intent was I am sure to implement the IMAP standard and POP was included in Thunderbird because it was probably easier at the time.

By definition once you open the folder the mail is "seen" and can not be "unseen". Unfortunately the server implementations appear to see downloading the mail as "seen" So a restart of Thunderbird simply looses this transitory state as it is not actually saved anywhere to be restored.