Re: Finding message by ID fails when message not visible

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Kai von Fintel <fintel@mit.edu> writes:

> I'm puzzled by the following behavior: if I search in an nnimap group
> for a message with a particular message-ID, the search fails unless the
> message is visible. If for example, only new messages are shown, the
> search for an old message with a particular ID fails but the same
> message is found when "/o" has made the old messages appear.
>
> This is relevant because I use links to gnus messages from org-mode and
> more often than not the link fails: I get taken to the nnimap group that
> contains the message, but I get the error "No such article (may have
> expired or been canceled)", even though the message is in fact in the
> group.
>
> I suppose org-gnus.el might have to be amended to work around this, but
> first I'd like to understand whether this is expected behavior in gnus.
>
> Can anybody enlighten me or help me trouble-shoot this?

No, it's not expected, and I haven't seen it before -- sorry for the
unhelpful reply! I just tried it (dovecot imap server), and it worked
both with and without angle brackets on the ID (sometimes brackets can
be an issue).

To be sure everyone's on the same page, how exactly are you searching?
If you're in the *Group* buffer and you hit "G G" on the group, and
paste in the message ID, is the message found? If you're already in the
*Summary* buffer, there isn't really any way to "search" as such,
there's only "limiting" what messages are shown by some criteria -- in
those cases it's true you won't be able to get to unseen messages.

But that should never affect following links from org mode...

Eric