try compacting from the file menu.

Thanks Matt. I did as suggested and saw Thunderbird working on the status bar. (I even picked up 76.5 MB of disk space :-)

Unfortunately, it didn't resolve the problem. Clicking on that Inbox folder caused the same brief blue ball that quickly became the macOS beach ball and a not responding status in the Force Quit menu.

Not sure if it's helpful, but I can see that main inbox folder continues to ping the server. i sent that account an email before clicking the Inbox and it incremented the counter in the Folder Pane.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again.

Hi Matt (or anyone else) - following-up to see if there are any other ideas to try. I'm still having the problem.  :-/

Thanks Brian

Hi-

I'm still having the issue and wanted to see if there was anything else I could try, or if this space will remain tumbleweeds indefinitely...  ;)

Thanks Brian

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems#Diagnosis_Steps the diagnosis steps do not just apply to memory.

murpholoa,

what did you learn from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems#Diagnosis_Steps ?

Hi Matt & Wayne -

Thanks for replying. I didn't learn too much, unfortunately, but here's what I can tell you:

• I am running Thunderbird 52.2.1 (64-bit) on macOS Sierra, which is the latest version according to the About... menu.
• I ran Thunderbird in Safe Mode and was able to reproduce the crash in exactly the same fashion as in regular mode.
• I do not believe an Extension is to blame; the only one I have installed is Lightning, I haven't changed that config in years and this problem only recently started to happen. (I wish for the life of me I could identify the exact moment when this crash began; my best guess is an update to macOS, unless it was a recent Thunderbird update that I didn't notice.)
• I do not believe it's an indexing question due to the nature of the bug and the fact that no part of this has changed AFAIK.
• I have one Gmail account and no newsgroup accounts, but that is not where the problem is. The problem, oddly, only surfaces in the Inbox folder of my first account (which happens to be AOL). The other folders on this account and all other accounts all work fine; and I do not have an Outlook or Hotmail account at all.
• I'm running Thunderbird for Mac so the Windows steps are not applicable.
• I ignored the steps concerning CPU, disk activity, folder size, or resource requirements as they did not seem to be relevant and have not changed materially since before this issue arose. I have ample memory and all other aspects of Thunderbird work perfectly apart from this single folder.

I hope these responses are helpful - please let me know if I can help further. Thanks for helping me troubleshoot!

Brian

Possible related bug reports in https://mzl.la/2w085gG and https://mzl.la/2vZLocr

the ones which stand out are

• Bug 713253 - hang after clicking Inbox. No CPU. (networking or sound related)
• Bug 1334824 - getting imap mail clicking Inbox not responding with high memory, windows 10 and Thunderbird both in safe mode. reordering accounts helps

Does disabling sound or changing default account in account settings change behavior??

Interesting, thanks. I can rule out the first bug (713253) because I've had sound disabled for years.

For the second (1334824) I only saw a way to change the default account. (I did not see where/how I could otherwise reorder them - is that a Windows-only feature?)

I changed my default account, restarted Thunderbird, but continued to experience the same problem. The new default account worked fine, and clicking the Inbox folder of the original default account, now the second account, caused Thunderbird to hang indefinitely.

I repeated these steps making a third account the default and the problem persisted. So it doesn't appear to be related to the bug reports you shared.

This certainly is an odd issue. I'm guessing this won't help, but https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/manually-sort-folders/ allows you to order accounts.

I'm thinking there is a message in your folder that is causing the hang. Make a copy of the folder file, bring it up in an editor. I'd look for a message either has an unusual or huge attachment, or has insane header length as described in https://mzl.la/2w0NEQz

Hi Wayne-

I appreciate the advice. I'm afraid this is getting beyond my ability and time to troubleshoot, so I am probably saying goodbye to ThUnderbird. It was a great app and I will miss it.

All the best !

Brian

murphola said

Thanks Matt. I did as suggested and saw Thunderbird working on the status bar. (I even picked up 76.5 MB of disk space :-) Unfortunately, it didn't resolve the problem. Clicking on that Inbox folder caused the same brief blue ball that quickly became the macOS beach ball and a not responding status in the Force Quit menu.

How big is Inbox - #messages, #mb?

murphola said

Not sure if it's helpful, but I can see that main inbox folder continues to ping the server. i sent that account an email before clicking the Inbox and it incremented the counter in the Folder Pane.

Not surprising. Thunderbird imap connections run on their own thread.

Hi Wayne-

The inbox is 9.4GB with 166K messages. I last compacted it a month ago after Matt's first response/solution posited on this thread.

Brian

Now we have some meat.

166k is very big inbox. Surely move of those are old business, not active communications. You have two options. 1. Archive at least 70% of them. If you have Thunderbird defaults, then conversations view should give you visibility into your old messages. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/ (if you are using TB52 you will need to use https://jonathan.protzenko.fr/thunderbird-conversations/201706111701-2.13+.xpi for now 2. Setup a saved search that shows only the last N days of inbox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-saved-searches

Question - are you using the default Unified folders view? Or do you have View, Folders set to all?