Mail not opening at new messages

I can't figure out how to have the mail client open at the newest messages, instead, when I open Opera, it shows me an email WAAAAY down the list. I need to explain a little more:

I open Opera to a saved session, which has two web pages, and the mail tab open (mail tab on top). When I saved this session a long time ago, a particular email was selected, from sometime back in 2009. Until 11.6, whenever I opened Opera, my session would open, it would show me this email from 2009 for just a moment and then jump up to my newest emails.

I've now installed 11.6. Now, whenever I open Opera, my saved session opens, and it just shows me this old email from 2009. To get to new emails, I must manually scroll up to my newest emails. While not terribly troublesome, it is annoying.

Is there a better way for me have Opera open to a session that includes the mail tab (and my other pages), without being stuck with this 2009 email for my first view?

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

I've now installed 11.6. Now, whenever I open Opera, my saved session opens, and it just shows me this old email from 2009.

Sounds like Opera had a bug previously and it was fixed.

But, see <http://my.opera.com/operawiki/forums/topic.dml?id=1144172> for how to get Opera to select the newest message. Try doing that and saving a session when no message is selected. It might work.

I followed the linked advice (ctrl + click to unselect message, so no messages are selected, then saved session). So far the resulting behavior is better, but is odd. When I closed Opera and reopened, it takes me to the 6th email from the top (this was not the email I had deselected, and not the last email I looked at prior to closing Opera). I sent myself a test email to see if that would change anything, and then opera opened at the 7th email down when I closed and reopened. I tried again, making sure I had a totally different email selected before I deselected and saved the session, but the behavior was the same--it opened again at the 7th email down. Odd, but somewhat less annoying than the previous behavior.

It seems like I should submit a bug report.

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

It seems like I should submit a bug report.

Opera's supposed to remember the message you had selected when you close the tab or Opera. I don't use saved sessions (just "continue from last time'), but I would expect it to work the same and remember the selected message from the session and not jump to the newest. Given that, what 11.60 sounds like intended behavior.

However, if it worked differently before and you can describe the steps to reproduce, a bug report would indeed be in order. Just note that the 11.60 behavior *might* be intentional and your bug might be more like a feature request. It's your call since you're familiar with saved sessions.

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

I followed the linked advice (ctrl + click to unselect message, so no messages are selected, then saved session). So far the resulting behavior is better, but is odd.

That does seem odd. It should jump to the newest message in this case.

Do things work better if you turn off grouping (wrech -> "do not group")?

I turned threading (I assume this is what you mean by grouping) off first thing when I downloaded 11.6--because it is annoying.

(or, in other words, threading was already off)

Well, I just spent the last 1/2 hour messing with the sessions file. It appears that there is a variable I can change to determine which message to show on startup. Each message has a number, and the whatever message is associated with the chosen number will show on startup (e.g., message 1 is the Opera introduction message, 2 is the first email received after that, 3 is the second email received, 9036 is the 9036th email received). Zero and any number without an associated message appears to call for the default behavior, whatever that is. In my case, the default behavior seems to be to show the 8th message down (it's the 8th message down now).

I don't see any variables in the session file that lets me mess with this.

I should clarify that Opera isn't just showing the last selected message (particularly given that I specifically unselected the message), because the message that comes up is neither the last message selected prior to closing opera nor the last message selected prior to saving the session. I really just don't know how it chooses the message to show on startup.

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

I turned threading (I assume this is what you mean by grouping) off

No. I mean "wrench -> group by date". Set it to "do not group" if you haven't already.

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

I really just don't know how it chooses the message to show on startup.

Don't know either. Try sorting by date in ascending order to see if you can get it to always focus the last message in the list (using the link trick above).

Turning off grouping does make a difference. When I turned off grouping and restarted, it opened with the first message selected. When I turned grouping back on and restarted, it opened with a message other than the first one selected.

It appears to me that the behavior of Opera when not grouping is the intended behavior, but the behavior when grouping is not intended, because there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

It appears to me that the behavior of Opera when not grouping is the intended behavior, but the behavior when grouping is not intended, because there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

When grouping is enabled, if you shift + arrow key across a group boundary, you'll notice that the header for the group gets highlighted. I wonder if the headers are being counted as an item in some weird way where it screws things up.

Aha! That might be my solution. I used the arrow to select the "Today" group heading (attempting to select it with the mouse does not work--that just opens and closes the group), and then saved the session. When I closed and reopened, it opened at my top email (still not perfect, for some reason it starts up with the list of emails scrolled down "one click"). We'll see if the behavior keeps up as I receive new emails.

Nope, it still opens at whatever email it feels like. At least it opens a lot closer to the top than it used to. But I'm not seeing a pattern--it isn't the most recent email selected before I closed Opera, it isn't the most recent email selected before I saved the session, and it isn't always the same email.

One thought I have on the perceived randomness at which it chooses to open is that perhaps something somewhere notes every 5 minutes or so which email is selected. Then, when I open Opera, it opens to whichever email it believes was most recently selected (unless the session was saved with a particular email selected, in which case it always goes to that email). So, perhaps this happens: (1) Opera notes which email is selected, (2) I look at some other emails, (3) I close Opera before it next notes which email is selected. Then when I reopen Opera, it opens to the email that it most recently noted as selected, so it appears random to me.

This theory has some holes, and this whole thing isn't really a big deal. But I am leaning more and more to thinking this is a bug and not the intended behavior of Opera.

After using this for several days, Opera is consistently opening at an email near the top of the list now. It is no longer opening at some old message. There still doesn't seem to be any sense as to where it opens, but it's much better anyway.

Originally posted by wile-e-wonka:

, but it's much better anyway

That's good a least.

This is now pretty much fixed in the latest snapshot--Opera opens to the message that was selected when opera was closed.

http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/03/15/thursday-11-62-update

This is on the list of fixes in the changelog:

DSK-355473 [Mail] Opera doesn't remember the last selected message in the list correctly through a restart anymore