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Thunderbird profile clean-up

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  • 1 inale nkinga
  • 415 views
  • Igcine ukuphendulwa ngu j_g1

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I am currently running thunderbird v68 on 4 linux (Xubuntu AMD64) machines using the same profile which is synchronised from machine to machine. However this profile is getting to be unwieldy and contains a number of inconsistencies and anomalies. For example it still thinks it's got emails from 2013 although these were offlined and deleted 7 years ago. History, cache and deleted items are cleared out and folders compacted daily yet the profile (excluding 1.9GB in the mail folders themselves) is still about 1GB a large chunk of which is in global-messages-db.sqlite. I could create a fresh profile but with 6 POP3 inboxes and an IMAP account plus a dozen or so addressbooks accumulated over the last 20+ years it's a bit of a daunting task. Is there any neat way of refreshing the Thunderbird bit while leaving the user data intact or at any rate restoring it automatically? Tks in anticipation of your help jg

I am currently running thunderbird v68 on 4 linux (Xubuntu AMD64) machines using the same profile which is synchronised from machine to machine. However this profile is getting to be unwieldy and contains a number of inconsistencies and anomalies. For example it still thinks it's got emails from 2013 although these were offlined and deleted 7 years ago. History, cache and deleted items are cleared out and folders compacted daily yet the profile (excluding 1.9GB in the mail folders themselves) is still about 1GB a large chunk of which is in global-messages-db.sqlite. I could create a fresh profile but with 6 POP3 inboxes and an IMAP account plus a dozen or so addressbooks accumulated over the last 20+ years it's a bit of a daunting task. Is there any neat way of refreshing the Thunderbird bit while leaving the user data intact or at any rate restoring it automatically? Tks in anticipation of your help jg

Isisombululo esikhethiwe

Maybe the 'global-messages-db.sqlite' file contains references that have already been deleted, so is out of date. You could Exit Thunderbird, access profile name folder and delete the 'global-messages-db.sqlite' file. When you restart it would get recreated and be a more current set of data. Worth trying to see if this improves size.

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Isisombululo Esikhethiwe

Maybe the 'global-messages-db.sqlite' file contains references that have already been deleted, so is out of date. You could Exit Thunderbird, access profile name folder and delete the 'global-messages-db.sqlite' file. When you restart it would get recreated and be a more current set of data. Worth trying to see if this improves size.

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Brill. The new file is 4.5MB - that's saved 560-odd MB. Who's a happy bunny ? Tks for the tip. Is there a list of all the different files that can be deleted without Thunderbird throwing its toys out of the pram?