New mail becomes read in absence when conversation is in view

I sometimes miss new mail under the following circumstances: a conversation is in view and receives a new mail. Because the conversation is already open and focused the new mail is marked read after the set amount of time. If I am not at the computer I have no way of telling that a new mail has been added to the thread. I realized this just now because a new mail arrived (sound played, mail notified) but no unread mail was shown in the main window. I then found the mail in the open conversation. This is a seemingly small but in consequence very serious bug!

I agree - I have had this problem as well. Postbox displays a message that says “Conversation Updated, Click Here to Refresh” (or something like that). I would like to see em client adopt this approach. I suppose as a workaround you can always opt for “Show conversations in message detail only”, but I find this view confusing.

Hello,

While this is not a bug per se, I agree that it’s certainly something we should change and implement the same method that Jay Ogram is suggesting. We’ll definitely take it under consideration.

-Dave

Thank you Dave. Please do add this functionality. I only noticed this issue when I missed a VERY IMPORTANT response b/c it was the conversation I had last read. Was alerted to the email I missed a week later after missing a big updated deadline. This is a big problem. Thanks. 

Another issue I ran into today for the first time. I received three responses of the same conversation within 10 minutes. I was away when they arrived. When I clicked the conversation, it took me to the last response - and it was just dumb luck I noticed there were two other responses preceding the last one. I just now turned conversations OFF. When/If this is issue is fixed, could someone please respond to this thread. I am assuming these fixes are going to take a while? 

For someone used to discussions in forums, I expect to be taken to the first unread message. Anything else makes no sense at all.

I wish to support this idea as a very urgent feature to implement in Em Client 7. The client is wonderful, but when I receive a new email in a conversation, that conversation should then move to the top of the most recent emails in the conversation view.  This is what happens in my Android email client, for example (k9).  As someone someone wrote above, without this, a new email arrives in a conversation that is already out of sight and you never see it.  This is a real dealbreaker if one wants to consider Em Client as the default.  After using it for a week now exclusively, this is the biggest problem in my opinion.  Otherwise the client is terrific, thank you!

I’ve been bitten by this UX bug many times, and I find myself missing important email messages because of this issue.

Gmail’s solution to this problem is to show a yellow button that states a new email from so-and-so has arrived. The user has to actively click the yellow button to see the new email, which then allows the email to be marked as read.

Can eM Client do something similar please?

For example, if new messages arrive in the conversation that’s currently in view, then instead of displaying the new messages, display a divider+button that states something like “Show 2 newer emails,” similar to the “Show 10 older emails” button that eM Client already utilizes for older messages in a conversation.

Thanks!

I have the same issue and find it very severe. Probably will have to switch to another email client, although otherwise I was pretty happy with the emclient. But I keep missing some emails in active threads (exactly as described by the original post), which has lead to some bad miscommunication.

I urge the development team to take this seriously.

I agree with the issue (see my comment above).  I have made it a habit to click away from the top mail and then back to it just to make sure I have not missed anything.  You also might try going to menu/tools/settings/mail/read and check “Show conversations in message detail only”.  This shows emails in the message list not grouped together, but the conversations still appear in the reading pane.

While this is not perfect, eM Client is still way better than anything else out there and I have tried them all.  This minor issue certainly does not rise to the level of abandoning the software.

I want to bump this thread so it keeps getting visibility.  This UX “feature” has bitten me about 5 times now and it has nearly caused some catastrophic consequences with multi-million dollar projects.  I’ve found that I routinely mark emails as read manually because I toss them before the auto-mark-as-read timer expires.  As such, I’ve just disabled the auto-read feature and now I can leave eM Client focused with a conversation selected and I will still notice that a new message has arrived.  This works for me, but may be a nuisance for other users.

There are at least 3 threads about this same issue, but the other two didn’t have solutions. eM Client has known exactly what causes this significant problem for over 2 years and hasn’t fixed it?
The other threads are:
https://forum.emclient.com/emclient/topics/messages-marking-as-read
https://forum.emclient.com/emclient/topics/problem_with_messages_marked_as_read

Not quite 2 years yet. I think this forum is rounding off to years with older posts. :slight_smile:

Conversations were not introduced until July 2016.