Thunderbird profile(s) too big despite empty trash, compacting, cleared cache etc.
In my Thunderbird (Portable) installation, I had 6 accounts of which I only used 3 actively. The whole thing had 11 to 12 GB in size on my harddrive, about all of it in the profile. I copied the complete Thunderbird folder and removed the 3 inactive accounts from one of the copies and the 3 active accounts from what I want to be the archive copy.
I emptied all the trash folders. I cleared all the caches. I compacted all the folders. Several times. I even deleted all the msf-files. I restarted the thunderbirds and clicked through all the folders to rebuild the index files again. I again compacted and cleared all the caches.
Still, I now have two thunderbird folders of which each has over 9 GB in size.
When digging through the profile folders, I can find sub-folders that exist in both thunderbird folders, but clearly shouldn’t, since I separated the accounts from another. From these observations, I fear that both installations now have dead data of up to 7 GB each that don’t belong to any of the visible e-mails.
Does anybody have another idea what I can do to force my two thunderbirds to get rid of these massive leftovers?
Chosen solution
re :ImportExportTools to see whether it might be an option to simply export all e-mails
Right click on mail account name and select 'ImportExportTools' > 'Export all the folders (with structure)' But this does not remove those folders, it just exports a copy of them. You are creating a load of work for yourself.
Are you talking about Imap or Pop mail accounts ? Sounds like you are using POP.
re : I copied the complete Thunderbird folder and removed the 3 inactive accounts from one of the copies and the 3 active accounts from what I want to be the archive copy. Did you 'remove' them via 'Account Settings' whilst Thunderbird was running? If yes and they were pop mail accounts then this would not have removed them from the profile name folders. This is done this way because they are pop mail accounts and you might only have the one copy and may have removed the account in error. It facilitates a recovery.
Run Thunderbird on your active currently used profile.
- Right click on pop mail account name in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
- Select 'Server Settings'
Bottom right, locate 'Local Directory:'
- left click in the text box to get a flashing text cursor
- use the right arrow key on keyboard to move to the far right - keep going until it stops.
Make a note of what it says, you could highlight all the text and copy paste into eg: Notepad. This is where that account is located and it's account name. This is the account you want to keep.
Whilst in Account Settings, do the same for all the other pop mail accounts. Now you will know which profile name you are using and all the active pop mail account names.
Exit Thunderbird.
Access that profile name folder and click on 'Mail' folder. You will see the list of pop mail accounts of which 3 are the ones you are currently using. Delete the ones you are not using - they will be the ones you had tried to 'remove'.
Now access the other copy you want to use as 'archive' profile. This time you want to delete the pop mail account names which you are currently using as you do not want them in the archive profile.
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PS:
Since the 6 accounts contain e-mails from ~20 years and countless e-mail accounts that I had over time, I am hesitant to just go and delete profile sub-folders. It would be hard to find out whether this removed e-mails that I wanted to keep.
Also, the folder structures are complex. Many folders in many levels, so it even took quite some time to go through all of them to rebuild the index files. So also not easy to see when something goes missing there that I want to keep.
I fiddled with the ImportExportTools to see whether it might be an option to simply export all e-mails, set up a fresh Thunderbird installation and import everything again. But it seems it will also end up in quite some work, since none of the options allow for a one-click export of a multi-level folder structure that ALSO imports again, so I would have to go through all the folders.
Chosen Solution
re :ImportExportTools to see whether it might be an option to simply export all e-mails
Right click on mail account name and select 'ImportExportTools' > 'Export all the folders (with structure)' But this does not remove those folders, it just exports a copy of them. You are creating a load of work for yourself.
Are you talking about Imap or Pop mail accounts ? Sounds like you are using POP.
re : I copied the complete Thunderbird folder and removed the 3 inactive accounts from one of the copies and the 3 active accounts from what I want to be the archive copy. Did you 'remove' them via 'Account Settings' whilst Thunderbird was running? If yes and they were pop mail accounts then this would not have removed them from the profile name folders. This is done this way because they are pop mail accounts and you might only have the one copy and may have removed the account in error. It facilitates a recovery.
Run Thunderbird on your active currently used profile.
- Right click on pop mail account name in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
- Select 'Server Settings'
Bottom right, locate 'Local Directory:'
- left click in the text box to get a flashing text cursor
- use the right arrow key on keyboard to move to the far right - keep going until it stops.
Make a note of what it says, you could highlight all the text and copy paste into eg: Notepad. This is where that account is located and it's account name. This is the account you want to keep.
Whilst in Account Settings, do the same for all the other pop mail accounts. Now you will know which profile name you are using and all the active pop mail account names.
Exit Thunderbird.
Access that profile name folder and click on 'Mail' folder. You will see the list of pop mail accounts of which 3 are the ones you are currently using. Delete the ones you are not using - they will be the ones you had tried to 'remove'.
Now access the other copy you want to use as 'archive' profile. This time you want to delete the pop mail account names which you are currently using as you do not want them in the archive profile.
Modified by Toad-Hall
Thank you, Toad-Hall, that solved the problem! I also had an IMAP account among them, but it was pretty clear how this worked, too.
PS: I found that export option with the structure, but none of the import options contained the exported structure, too.
re : I found that export option with the structure, but none of the import options contained the exported structure
When you exported the folder, you exported in the format of mbox files. If there were any subfolders they would be exported in a folder with .sbd extension and those .sbd folders would contain mbox files. mbox files are text files; they do not have any extension.
To import mbox files with their subdirectory structure. Right click on mail account name or folder if desired and select 'ImportExportTools' > 'Import mbox' You would need the second option. select 'Import one or more mbox files, with it's/their subdirectory' click on 'OK'
Then select the mbox file(s) you want to import.
Exporting/Importing via 'Tools' in the menu also offers additional options. You can even export and import profiles. see more info explaining options at this link: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
I am pretty sure I tried exactly this. The export with structure was fine, but the import only worked for the top level e-mails. Maybe it also created the sub-folders, but didn’t import the e-mails there, too.
I will come back to this later since I also want to archive some more e-mails from my active accounts from old projects. Will report how it goes.