Actually doing it would be the first step.

Thanks, smart a*s.

Considering the details you provided it seems appropriate. Have you compacted lately?

No. Don't want to.

How did I guess you were one of Those people? It is a normal maintenance item. You risk data corruption if you continue to ignore. I agree it is poorly named, but I suggest you read this and start doing it.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders

Now you are on your own. Good luck.

OFFTHECLOCK said

How can I stop Thunderbird from constantly asking if I want to compact my folders?

Please describe this in more detail.

• If you compacted and it is still asking, then say so.
• If you don't want it to compact at all, please describe why and what you tried so far to to make it stop
• etc

> I agree it is poorly named, but I suggest you read this and start doing it.

To elaborate - compact is part of normal, good Thunderbird hygiene. You are probably seeing it now because it was broken for a while and was fixed in a recent update

Thanks.

1. Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > General, then click on Config Editor.
2. Click I accept the risk, to continue to the Config Editor.
3. Search for the preference mail.purge.ask
4. Double-click on it to change the value to False.

Background When you delete a message, it doesn’t really get deleted from the folder. It gets marked as deleted. Thunderbird sees that marking, and knows not to display the message. Compacting a folder will command Thunderbird to remove all messages marked as deleted from that folder.

• To compact all folders on demand, go to the File menu and select Compact Folders.
• To compact an individual folder, right-click on the folder and select Compact.

For more detailed information, check out the following article: Compacting folders

Thank you for an informative reply that actually answers the question and provides a clear statement of what compacting does. That is refreshing after the initial snide remarks from others.

OFFTHECLOCK said

How can I stop Thunderbird from constantly asking if I want to compact my folders?

Dear Offtheclok,

I have the same requirement. I don't want to delete emails. Does "mail.purge.ask false" only stop the asking.

But that I mean will taking that action stop Compaction to happen automatically, without my knowledge please.

I know there are other options for taking backuos of emails in Thunderbird. And I;ll investigate them. For example ImportExportTools doesn't yet work with Thunderbird v 60 on my system.

Hi silverfox5678, This thread was marked as solved by the person who asked the original question. You should use https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new where volunteers can get more details about your setup.

Because this thread is solved and more people might start using it for their own questions, I'm going to lock it.