This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Poor Thunderbird response/performance with multi-Gb shared sales inbox

  • 2 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

more options

Greetings I recently started working with at a manufacturing firm and I have four sales people sharing one communal sales mailbox on an onsite email server using IMAP. All clients (same room) experiencing seemingly random, heavy lag time between clicks when using Thunderbird (three are using Version 52.9.1, the fourth (and heaviest email) user upgraded to 60.0). I have tried disabling all add-ons, reinstalling the Win10 OS, all users are using modern Dell Precision workstations, have SSD's and +16Gb Ram.

After some research I understand the inbox is a giant text file under constant read/write and very crucial to let Thunderbird compact (which is done regularly by all users). Inbox file is small but several others which I presume represent inbox folders are very large (see screenshot). I'd expect the large local files don't help, but don't think they're the root cause of this poor performance. Any constructive input would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Ryan

Greetings I recently started working with at a manufacturing firm and I have four sales people sharing one communal sales mailbox on an onsite email server using IMAP. All clients (same room) experiencing seemingly random, heavy lag time between clicks when using Thunderbird (three are using Version 52.9.1, the fourth (and heaviest email) user upgraded to 60.0). I have tried disabling all add-ons, reinstalling the Win10 OS, all users are using modern Dell Precision workstations, have SSD's and +16Gb Ram. After some research I understand the inbox is a giant text file under constant read/write and very crucial to let Thunderbird compact (which is done regularly by all users). Inbox file is small but several others which I presume represent inbox folders are very large (see screenshot). I'd expect the large local files don't help, but don't think they're the root cause of this poor performance. Any constructive input would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! Ryan

All Replies (2)

more options

we are missing the screen shot, but have you checked to make sure the Thunderbird profile folder (The Mail and IMAP mail folders and global-index-db.sqlite at least) are excluded from on access anti virus scanning. Nothing like the AV locking a file that is constantly being updated to make things slow.

Make sure the IAMP server supports the IMAP IDLE command and that it is enabled. Then make sure the connection time to check for mail is set for a relatively long period like 15-20 minutes (IDLE will notify of new mail so a full blown check it not needed)

A bit of background on IDLE here is you need it. https://www.isode.com/whitepapers/imap-idle.html

more options

Hi Sysadmin_Sandcastles

can you give us an update please?