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How do I delete local copies of email out of the synchronization target of 90 days while keeping the remote copy on gmail?

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  • Last reply by Concrete03

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I have set the synchronization target to be 90 days inside the account settings.

Upon compacting the folders and restarting thunderbird, the messages outside of that range is still in their respective folder.

Is there a way for me to delete the ones out of range, but keep a remote copy on gmail?

I have set the synchronization target to be 90 days inside the account settings. Upon compacting the folders and restarting thunderbird, the messages outside of that range is still in their respective folder. Is there a way for me to delete the ones out of range, but keep a remote copy on gmail?

Chosen solution

So read these posts: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1288270 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1322885

And suppose that there is not need to delete them anymore! If you really want to save space, then just delete the mbox file and restart, only the headers will be downloaded for messages out of range!

Okay, so another way to do it is to remove the account and its message data, and just set the synchronization settings to what you need. It should only download the headers for out of range messages. Unchecking the "Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer" like someone else suggested doesn't seem to change that behavior.

In the end though, if you are to go offline and decide to download the messages, everything will still be downloaded. So perhaps I will have to look into the download settings instead.

That will be a new question.

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Chosen Solution

So read these posts: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1288270 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1322885

And suppose that there is not need to delete them anymore! If you really want to save space, then just delete the mbox file and restart, only the headers will be downloaded for messages out of range!

Okay, so another way to do it is to remove the account and its message data, and just set the synchronization settings to what you need. It should only download the headers for out of range messages. Unchecking the "Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer" like someone else suggested doesn't seem to change that behavior.

In the end though, if you are to go offline and decide to download the messages, everything will still be downloaded. So perhaps I will have to look into the download settings instead.

That will be a new question.

Modified by Concrete03