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.

Avatar for Username

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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Delete messages from server

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by dkx4wia

dkx4wia
dkx4wia
more options

All I want to do is clear some messages from my email account (i.e. Thunderbird and server). By the way, the only reason I need to do this is because Thunderbird runs dog slow with my account as it is.

In my server settings (this is an IMAP account), I have set "when I delete a message" to "remove it immediately".

Clean up inbox on exit = ticked Empty deleted folder on exit = ticked

I have also changed "check for new messages every..." to 60 minutes in case a sync was done while I trawled through my account.

I am going through and shift + deleting batches of emails and clicking "compact" when each batch is highlighted. I get through thousands and then see that my account is syncing again (which happens about every 10 minutes despite telling it to do this every 60 mins) and then the messages all reappear.

I have now literally wasted hours on this. It should not be so hard to delete some emails. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO??

All I want to do is clear some messages from my email account (i.e. Thunderbird and server). By the way, the only reason I need to do this is because Thunderbird runs dog slow with my account as it is. In my server settings (this is an IMAP account), I have set "when I delete a message" to "remove it immediately". Clean up inbox on exit = ticked Empty deleted folder on exit = ticked I have also changed "check for new messages every..." to 60 minutes in case a sync was done while I trawled through my account. I am going through and shift + deleting batches of emails and clicking "compact" when each batch is highlighted. I get through thousands and then see that my account is syncing again (which happens about every 10 minutes despite telling it to do this every 60 mins) and then the messages all reappear. I have now literally wasted hours on this. It should not be so hard to delete some emails. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO??

All Replies (2)

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

I have an imap account with Google with some 21,000 unread email from 110,000 email in the inbox. Adding it to Thunderbird made no difference to how fast the program ran, after the initial download. Downloading appears to slow things a little.

Next your account is IMAP. most IMAP account these days include the IDLE command that allows the server to notify of new mail and initiate a syncronisation of same. There is a setting in your account settings for IDLE.

Next, IMAP is not a file system, it is a way to synchronise changes in email between a server and a client. My observation is it tends to loose changes and things just start disappearing into the ether when the number of mails exceeds about 500. This is made very much worse if you have an anti virus product helping.

Anti virus programs tend to scan files at a rate of around 10 minutes per Gigabyte. Because most anti virus products do not respect the mail files, they try and scan them every time Thunderbird receives, deleted or moves an email. The result is usually a total mess with Thunderbird not being able to access files, the anti virus locking files that are being required and all for zero increase in your security as mail files are text files. Therefore we suggest that the mail and IMAP mail folder at the very least in your profile be exempted from this invasive activity by creating exception in the relevant anti virus products for those folders.

dkx4wia
dkx4wia Question owner
more options

OK so I unticked "immediate server notifications when new messages arrive" which is presumably the IDLE option you were talking about (just to try and make sure a sync didn't happen when I was in the middle of deleting emails).

I have also whitelisted the mail and IMAP mail folders in my AV settings.

Spent another hour going through and tidying the mailbox, compacted the folders I deleted from.

Next sync, back they all come once again.

Clearly no way to do a simple tidy up of my mailbox. Incredible.

You're right, there is a noticeable slowdown of the UI when downloading new mail, which is poor in itself since surely that activity happens in a different thread!

Modified by dkx4wia