Compression does not happen after volume of emails are deleted
indicator shows 80% of capacity, but deleting may & large emails results in no change when compression is done. 80% shows 11.5GB if 14.3GB total; however total of boxes of files is around 2GB??? Is compression working??
All Replies (9)
It does seem that it is corrupted file, but I'm running windows 10 and cannot locate a profile in any of the subdirectories or anywhere in the Thunderbird program files, despite following the instructions to type folder in the search box and seeing hidden files ( I get them for other software installed but not TB!!) So I can't proceed to save the profile!! So ground to a halt...
Select Help/More Troubleshooting, Profile Folder, Open Folder, to open the profile folder. Look in the Mail/<popservername> (POP accounts) or ImapMail/<imapservername> subfolders for the relevant files, such as Inbox and Inbox.msf, if the corrupted folder is the Inbox. Close TB before editing any profile files.
Copy messages from the affected folder to another folder, in TB, before doing the folder rebuild.
After clearing the inbox totally and following these directions to delete INBOX & INBOX .msf files, it still comes back saying that the inbox is 81% full with nothing in it!! Where do I go from here??
Who is the mail provider, and is the account POP or IMAP? If you restarted TB after deleting Inbox and Inbox.msf, connecting to the mail server would have synced with the Inbox on the mail server (IMAP), or downloaded whatever was in the Inbox on the mail server (POP). If it was POP and you had TB set to delete from the server after download, the new Inbox would be empty.
Whatever the account type, check the account in webmail to see the exact size of Inbox.
The account is IMAP; server is imap.bell-1.net. When the INBOX has been emptied, it shows no INBOX file and the INBOX.msf account shows 3KB. and imap.bell-1.net.msf shows 2KB. (there was a previous old installation which is imap.bell.net, but it is not active; although I tried to delete it & it came back, but shows no INBOX files.) Still, when I open TB it still shows 81% full and the INBOX in properties show 0 (zero)..
The actual Bell/Sympatico IMAP server is imap.bell.net, but you appear to have 2 subfolders in the profile folder, ImapMail/imap.bell.net and the newer ImapMail/imap.bell-1.net. This happens when an account is removed and later added again. You can see which folder is in current use by opening Account Settings and checking under Server Settings for the Local Directory.
If you deleted the Inbox and Inbox.msf files from the correct folder, upon restart TB would have downloaded the Inbox from the server. The size of the Inbox should be visible by viewing it in webmail, and should be the same as the size reported in TB after the Inbox rebuild ('Size on disk' in Inbox Properties).
Yes, it has already been clear that the imap.bell-1.net is the active one. I've deleted the INBOX for both and the old does not come back & the imap.bell-1.net is not even there until mail comes through, although the Inbox.msf does come back immediately. As this process does not seem to fix the incorrect 80+% size indicator, it seems that I need to resort to re-installing??
If I uninstall & re-install can I hook back up with the local mailboxes some how. I assume that I have to export the address book & start the calendar add-one again??
Reinstalling doesn't affect the profile with all your data, but creating a new profile, adding the account, and seeing if the size changes, is a better test. Help/More Troubleshooting, about:profiles, to create and run profiles.