Is there a speed advantage to archive emails by year (so subfolder with the year name)?
My file named "Archive" (no extension) in the ImapMail\outlook.office365.com\ folder is now 3 GB. I like all my inbox email progressively be archived in a single archive folder, searches are easier (in do not need to tick off "search subfolders" when I do Edit -> Find -> Search and I select the Archive folder. But I was wondering: does this affect speed (speed at which chunk of emails are archived at once, search speed etc) ? Should I archive by year? If it makes a big difference, how do I get thunderbird to get everything moved in years folder? If I select "yearly archived folder" in the attached screenshot, is it gonna start archiving by year from now on but it leaves the old files in a single folder, or does it creates also the yearly older folders and split all the past emails on those folders?
All Replies (5)
The choice is entirely yours. Memory usage and performance will depend on your number of messages. If you have 100k message per year I wouldn't recommend "yearly" and collecting 0.5 million messages or more in a single folder over a 5 or 10 year period. (just an arbitrary number)
Wayne Mery can you please provide more information? From your answer I do not understand when I should group messages over multiple years or not, and you are not answering explicitly my questions. Is 100k a small or big number? If 100k is big, why 100k in each folder for different year is bad but 500k in one folder covering 5 years is good?
Honestly, I'm not prepared to give a technical explanation. Plus, the impact of how many messages really depends on your system, but I know nothing about your system. So I'm just going to give ball park recommendations that you probably don't want to have more than 100,000 messages in a folder. In other words, 100k is big.
So if your yearly average is 100k, then do yearly archives. But if it's a lot more I suggest you use monthly.
I have 31k email in Inbox. Single Archive with 38k. 8k sent items. Thurderbird is slow as hell. My system is windows 11. I have the new 2025 LG gram. 32 GB of ram (https://www.amazon.com/LG-17-inch-Lightweight-Computer-Processor/dp/B0F1YZ4PB3?adgrpid=177218412223&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=748029726652&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2277569262320902097&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011700&hvtargid=dsa-2418061218664&hydadcr=&mcid=&hvocijid=2277569262320902097--&hvexpln=67&tag=googhydr-20&hvsb=Computers_d&hvcampaign=dsadesk&th=1).
Thank you for posting your real problem.
- Start Windows in safe mode with networking enabled - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode
- Still In Windows safe mode, start Thunderbird in Troubleshoot Mode - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-mode-thunderbird
- View > Toolbars > untick "Status Bar"
Does performance improve?
How do you like the LG Gram? (I almost bought one a couple years back)
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