Support yearly/monthly archive folders

[Eilyra]

Currently using Thunderbird as a desktop MUA, which supports automatically archiving messages into yearly or monthly subdirectories of the primary archive directory. Examples from Thunderbird below.

Yearly archive:

Monthly archive:

[guettli]

Yes, would be great to have this feature.

I would like a button on the bottom line. Up to now there these icons:

• search
• sync
• sort
• new mail

I would like to see a new icon/button to archive the current mail

What can I do make this happen?

[jondo]

I would also need yearly archive subfolders.

@guettli Your requested archive button is already available - I am using it all the time. Please ask in the support mailing list for how to configure it.

[guettli]

@jondo are the no docs which explain how to configure it?

[guettli]

... no progress here ... sad. Is there something I can do?

[philipwhiuk]

You could implement it @guettli. Short of that, it's fairly well described so there's not much more needed.

Complex features are generally developed by a developer who needs the feature. Personally speaking features I want / need is already a long enough list to keep me busy.

As an aside, an archival service would need to be done quite efficiently - we don't have lots of spare CPU time to do this kind of thing.

Personally I also think that replicating every single feature of a desktop application is misguided given we don't have the CPU power and are often in bandwidth constrained enviroments. In general we don't store every e-mail either - a mobile client making server-side searches to work out if stuff needs archiving seems crazy to me.

[Eilyra]

As an aside, an archival service would need to be done quite efficiently - we don't have lots of spare CPU time to do this kind of thing.

Ah, there seems to be a miscommunication on my part on what is being requested. The feature is a tad simpler than that, it's merely extending the existing Archive command to file the message being archived into an appropriate subfolder of the archive folder, creating it as necessary. It wouldn't touch existant archived files, merely refile messages more intelligently. Consequently, CPU and bandwidth considerations should be minimal merely requiring some additional logic when the user presses the archive button.

A proper automated archival service does seem quite out of scope for a mobile email client.

[philipwhiuk]

Oh fair enough. Anyway, the point about developer priority still stands.

It's worth pointing out K-9 currently can't create folders, which would seem to be a good first step.

[guettli]

Yes creating folders is needed for this feature.

Why can't K9 create IMAP folders?

Is this difficult?

[philipwhiuk]

I don't think so - it's just never been a demand I guess. It looks fairly straightforward: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#page-34

I'll create a separate issue for managing IMAP folders.

[Dinduks]

Given the huge leg work necessary to support folders creating, would it be possible to add an experimental version that only supports archiving into an existing folder?

If the folder doesn't exist the user will have to create it manually through Thunderbird or some other interface.

This manual folder creating must be done once a year and is much less taxing/annoying than having to do Refile > Move > Select folder for every single email.

For me personally this would make managing emails a breeze because for now it's such a pain to move each email manually.
If this doesn't work my last resort will be switching to a flat archives structure.

What do you guys think?

[Miademora]

Something like a "quick move"/archive button would be amazing :)

[cketti]

K-9 Mail already offers a quick way to archive messages. The "Archive" action is located in the "Refile" menu when viewing a message. It can be promoted to a first level action under 'General settings > Display > Visible message actions'. See also: https://k9mail.app/documentation/settings/global#visible-message-actions

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