How do I PERMANENTLY delete emails from the 'deleted' folder? My list of 'deleted' emails is huge and getting longer by the day, using up valuable memory space.
When I try to delete emails that I had deleted from the 'Inbox' from the 'Deleted' section, they always return when I next use Thunderbird again. Thunderbird seems to be determined to keep a permanent record of all the emails that I have received in the 'Deleted' section/folder since I first started using this app years ago. There seems to be no way of getting rid of them. Why is this? The only thing that this trash is doing is using up valuable computer memory. The less meory a computer has, the slower it will run. If I am missing something here then please enlighten me - how do I get rid of all my pseudo-'deleted' emails?
Chosen solution
Normal behaviour in Thunderbird is that when you delete a message from the Inbox folder, Sent folder, or another folder in an account, the message is moved to the Deleted folder for that account. To remove it from the Deleted folder you select the message and delete it again. Or you can 'select all' (i.e. all the messages in the Deleted folder) and delete. In your Account Settings > Server Settings you can also set Thunderbird to 'empty the Deleted folder on exit', i.e. to clear deleted emails when you shut down the program. If you don't want the messages you delete from Inbox, Sent etc. to go to the Deleted folder in the first place you can select a message and press Shift + Delete, or you can right-click the message and select 'delete' from the drop-down menu. Are you saying that you have tried these methods and the emails keep reappearing every time you restart the program?
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Try compacting folders. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders
Chosen Solution
Normal behaviour in Thunderbird is that when you delete a message from the Inbox folder, Sent folder, or another folder in an account, the message is moved to the Deleted folder for that account. To remove it from the Deleted folder you select the message and delete it again. Or you can 'select all' (i.e. all the messages in the Deleted folder) and delete. In your Account Settings > Server Settings you can also set Thunderbird to 'empty the Deleted folder on exit', i.e. to clear deleted emails when you shut down the program. If you don't want the messages you delete from Inbox, Sent etc. to go to the Deleted folder in the first place you can select a message and press Shift + Delete, or you can right-click the message and select 'delete' from the drop-down menu. Are you saying that you have tried these methods and the emails keep reappearing every time you restart the program?
Thanks for the advice guys. I also found something else - by actually right-clicking on 'Deleted' and also on 'All (emails)' and selecting properties, I found that I could restrict the amount of emails saved to these folders, thus deleting the rest.