What is "hidden" mail?

I just saw a mail come in on my notifier, yet couldn't find it in my inbox, where it should have been. I went to Received and it wasn't there either. Then, checking the View filters there, I saw the "hidden" attribute. What on earth is that? As soon as I checked it the mail showed up.

The mail in question was from a forum I regularly get mail from, I don't use an local Opera Mail filters. I'm IMAP on a gmail account, and there are no filters that should have hit this mail, nor is there any 'hidden' designation I'm aware of.

Whatever this is, it has the potential for missing mail unless I understand how it works.

Thanks,
p.

Email filters can have the attribute "Hide messages from other views". This is to be able to have filters work like folders.

This option is pretty much only available for labels, so it's strange that you say that you don't have any of those. IMAP allows labels (in IMAP speech: flags) applied to messages so that clients on different computers are automatically synced - but that doesn't create a folder. Also, I believe that the "hide from other views" attribute is not synced over IMAP, although I may be wrong here.

So my best guess is to advise you to double check that you don't have any labels: there's a "labels" column in the Received filter. A message that doesn't show when you have "show hidden" unchecked but shows when you have "show hidden" on should have a label listed in that column.

In the panel, the entire labels section can be hidden. In case you did that, there may still be a label lingering around there somewhere that you just don't know about? Just guessing though.

Thanks for your reply. I do have several gmail labels that I sync to opera mail, and I have gmail filters that I use to sort mail, but no local filters.

Also, I would think that the Received folder would act like Gmail's All Mail folder, and would inherently transcend any folder definition rules. (In fact, I'd like to see the folder renamed to All Mail. Currently its purpose is very confusing, as you even can show Sent mail there.)

Here is a shot of the Received folder. You can see that the highlighted mail, which is the one in question, has no label.

hidden mail

Received is properly named, as it's supposed to show all mail that has ever been received. I think you would agree that 'sent' is properly named, and by the same logic, so is 'received'. The fact that you can show sent mail in 'received' is important if you want to show emails threaded, i.e. in a way that shows the entire conversation.

Anyway, back to the problem: I have no idea why Opera would show that email only when 'show hidden' is checked. It may be due to GMail's quirky way of using IMAP, where a folder is used as a label (see this article http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-imap-implementation in case you're interested.)

In order to work around the deficiencies of Google's IMAP implementation, Opera have made adjustments of Opera Mail specifically for Google Mail. So the problem you've seen may well be a bug in Opera's workarounds. I suggest that you file a bug report at https://bugs.opera.com/wizard/ where you describe the problem and add a link to this thread.

Done.

Thank you.

Opera automatically sets all IMAP folders created by Gmail for its own labels as 'hidden', because otherwise they'd show up as duplicates in Unread and Received. This because when you label a message in Gmail, it creates a *copy* of the message in a IMAP folder named after the label. And if the message is also present in the 'inbox', then there are even three copies of the message present in Gmail's IMAP.

I don't know what has happened in your case, in which IMAP folders does the message show up when you look in Opera Mail?

Originally posted by WildEnte:

Also, I believe that the "hide from other views" attribute is not synced over IMAP

It's not synced over IMAP. But, Gmail IMAP folders (most of them) have "hide these messages from other views" set so only the copies from "[Gmail]/Al Mail" show up in "All Messages/Received" and other Opera views. To unhide those, you can check "show hidden". Then, you'll see the duplicates unless you uncheck "show duplicates".

But, if you create a new IMAP folder for Gmail IMAP, it won't have "hide these messages from other views" set (yet). So, you need to set it in index.ini.

Edit: I see Rijk beat me to it.

Originally posted by paul1149:

Also, I would think that the Received folder would act like Gmail's All Mail folder

It does by default pretty much (if you're using the newest version of Opera and are subscribed to all of the account's IMAP folders). Opera has specific support to handle Gmail IMAP so that it works with Opera's views. See <http://operawiki.info/GmailIMAP> for more info.

Originally posted by paul1149:

I just saw a mail come in on my notifier, yet couldn't find it in my inbox, where it should have been. I went to Received and it wasn't there either. Then, checking the View filters there, I saw the "hidden" attribute. What on earth is that? As soon as I checked it the mail showed up.

With Gmail IMAP, since there is more than one copy of the message, you might get a notification of one of the hidden copies from one of your Gmail labels ("Inbox" is a label too) first before you get a notification about the unhidden copy from "[Gmail]/All Mail". Selecting "[Gmail]/All Mail" or doing a check/send should bring in all copies. However, since Opera IDLEs on "[Gmail]/All Mail", you should receive (and get a notification about) the copy from it first. But, perhaps sometimes you might not.

If you have a message come in

Originally posted by paul1149:

hidden mail

In the pic, I noticed the message has the trash icon next to it saying it's a trashed message. Did it have that at the time this happened? Usually in that case, it's "show trash" that controls whether it's shown.

If the message was a trash message at the time, do you know if you moved it to the trash with the Opera you're using or another client (mail.google.com, another Opera or Thunderbird etc.)?

Another thing you can do though if this happens again is to delete the IMAP account and add it back in to see if it fixes anything.

Sorry, I'm afraid I've lost it. I did a purge of the Trash, and now I'm not seeing the mail anywhere.

Wait. I just checked the forum site, and the last mail from that thread should have come in at 3.26 AM (US Eastern) this morning. I saw the mail listed in my notifier (Codebit Google Mail Notifier extension) just a while ago, say 2:15 PM. Comparing the two, it seems that either the notifier or gmail's rss feed screwed up, and not opera mail.

Does that sound like a sound conclusion? If so, no harm done here, just a bunch of confusion. And I still don't understand hidden mail.

Originally posted by paul1149:

Does that sound like a sound conclusion?

Don't know. Not actually sure what you're saying. But, note that when your notifier app detects the new message and when Opera detects the new message can be at a different time. And, when Opera detects the copy of the message in "[Gmail]/All Mail" and when Opera detects the copy of the mesage in "Inbox" can be at a different them.

So, I wouldn't rely on the notifier app if you're using Gmail IMAP and would let Opera notify you.

Originally posted by paul1149:

or gmail's rss feed screwed up

So, the message was a feed message? If not, I'm not sure what this would have to do with feeds.

Originally posted by paul1149:

And I still don't understand hidden mail.

Read through <http://operawiki.info/HowM2ViewsWork>.

Sorry for the confusion. I can understand some disparity between when OM and the notifier see a mail, but this was an 11 hour gap. Something somewhere hiccuped badly.

I referred to "gmail's rss feed" because I'm assuming the notifier I use accesses the gmail account through its rss feed (as did the different notifier I used on Chrome).

From operawiki:
" if you have a label set to "hide these messages from other views", if you don't want those messages to show in a view, make sure "view -> show -> show hidden" is unchecked for that view."

This I understand - I think. But it seems to me the Received folder is more complicated than it needs to be. I like gmail's All Mail folder. When you're there, you are sure you're looking at all the mail (I think). Opera's setup offers more power, but being unaware of what's going on can cause a lot of trouble, as when I didn't realize Received includes feed messages. The only thing I detest about gmail's folders is the special limitations placed on the Sent folder, whereby mail there cannot be deleted apart from their children in other folders. Horrendous idea. But then Gmail was set up with the presupposition that retaining mail is a categorically good thing.

Originally posted by paul1149:

But it seems to me the Received folder is more complicated than it needs to be.

"All Messages/Received" returns all messages known by the database. Then, if you want to filter that a little bit, you have the "view -> show" options to uncheck (some are unchecked by default like "trash" and "feeds"). It's pretty straightforward. "[Gmail]/All Mail" is the same way except trash in spam are in separate folders instead of just being hidden and in separate folders.

Originally posted by paul1149:

I referred to "gmail's rss feed" because I'm assuming the notifier I use accesses the gmail account through its rss feed (as did the different notifier I used on Chrome).

O.K., gotcha. The Gmail rss feed only shows unread messages from the "Inbox" imap folder. The notifier might see that before Opera sees the copy in "All Mail" and where Opera see the hidden copy from "Inbox" before the "All mail" copy. I'm guess that's what you ran into, but don't know for sure.

Given the 11 hr gap, I think it's more likely the gmail rss feed somehow suffered a double-tap, and that I actually did see the mail come into OM earlier.

IIRC, the mail in question was the second of two in the notifier popup, so now that I think about it, it probably was the notifier's internal rules about showing mail that is at the root of this, and the rss feed itself is ok. I wish I could state the satus of the mail when this happened, as to whether it had been expunged from Trash or not. I can't, but I suspect it was still in Trash.

But the important thing is that I think a reasonable explanation has been arrived at, that gives me assurance that though there was sloppiness somewhere, there is no danger of missing incoming mail.

Be well,
Paul