Mail: Multiple Select All Glitches
The bulk select all checkbox in Proton Mail seems to apply only to the current page. So hundreds of emails on pages 2 and beyond are failing to apply the requested action (e.g. mark as read).
In fact, the the Mark as Read / Mark as Unread toggle doesn't even present a consistent action from page to page of the results. You have to remember not to accidentally mark some results as unread, as you traverse each individual page.
-
Joe Roberts
commented
My experience is a little different, but related:
Selecting mails via the bulk checkbox selector does default to batches of 50, but at the top of the screen, once I do this, an option appears to *truly* select all messages. That works -- all messages in a folder are now selected -- but when it comes to mark them all as read or unread, things are suboptimal.
"Mark Read" and "Mark as Unread" are performed with a single icon whose function changes based on logic I do not understand.
Sometimes it is "mark as read," and sometimes "mark as unread," and it tends to pick the one I do not want when I select a very large list of messages in different states (some read, some unread) -- frequently, the only option is to do the wrong thing.
Example: Want to mark all messages read.
1. I use the bulk checkbox selector to select 50.
2. Then the option appears to select all messages in the folder, which I do.
3. Now, hundreds or thousands of mails are properly selected. Some are read, some are unread, in this bulk selection.
4. But there is only a single button whose usage changes and it provies me ONE option: mark as unread. This is the opposite of what I want to do.
5. In order to get the result I want, I must bulk-mark them all as unread.
6. Reselect in the two-step process as above.
7. Then the button's context changes and allows me to mark them all as read.
This is incredibly cumbersome. First of all, while I understand that doing 50 at a time probably reduces server load, I question whether anyone ever wants to work with 50 messages at a time. I can't think of a use case where I wouldn't want select all to really mean "select all" - not 50, all of them.
Secondly, guessing what I want to do and changing that single button to "mark as unread" or "mark as read" is not working well. There should be two buttons, one for each. In the event your back-end code needs everything in a consistent state so it's not If-Then'ing every message for its state before figuring out what to do, that process should, in any case, be a single click for the user. (Example: I want to "mark read," I click on "mark read" and it performs mark all as unread, then mark all as read, two jobs, without me having to do the process above.)