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

Duplicates in Trash

more options

One of my POP accounts has a strange problem with its local Trash folder. Recent messages, going back about 2 weeks look normal. Before that, messages up to about 6 weeks old are all duplicated. Before, that, some are duplicated and some have 4 copies. If I scroll down to about 2 months ago, some of the messages have 8 copies, and so on, until I have 16 copies of all of my oldest messages.

So it appears that Thunderbird is periodically duplicating everything in the Trash folder. Is this a retention policy gone wrong? Any patches available to prevent this?

Currently running Thunderbird 60.8.0.

One of my POP accounts has a strange problem with its local Trash folder. Recent messages, going back about 2 weeks look normal. Before that, messages up to about 6 weeks old are all duplicated. Before, that, some are duplicated and some have 4 copies. If I scroll down to about 2 months ago, some of the messages have 8 copies, and so on, until I have 16 copies of all of my oldest messages. So it appears that Thunderbird is periodically duplicating everything in the Trash folder. Is this a retention policy gone wrong? Any patches available to prevent this? Currently running Thunderbird 60.8.0.

Chosen solution

I am happy to report that the problem is resolved after I did these three things:

1. Disabled the Retention Policy on the Trash folder, setting it to "Don't delete any messages."

2. Disabled the "Leave messages on the server" option for the affected account.

3. Upgraded to v60.9.0.

One or all of these things was likely flawed, so I will just avoid them going forward.

Thank you all for the ideas.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (10)

more options

Hello there Robert Chapin. We have read your message.

We try to help you.

Greetings Firefox volunteer.

hello there again. Here is a good add-on for safely removing the sub / folders from the trashcan on your computer machine.

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/remove-duplicate-messages/

Greetings Firefox volunteer.

Modified by День сумо

more options

Hello there Robert Chapin.


is there also talk of a double trashcan in your menu bar? or anywhere else?

the folders in your trashcan / folder? are these also renamed if they are duplicated?

There is not really much information on this subject at thunderbird it seems almost uncommon.

Let me hear from you.

Greetings Firefox volunteer.

Modified by День сумо

more options

Just as a level set - for a pop accounts only the Inbox interacts with the server, so everything in the Trash folder is from actions and activity taking place locally on your PC.

That said, I've never seen someone report what you are seeing.

more options

I'm also having trouble with deleted messages not appearing in the Trash folder. I deleted a month-old message from my Inbox earlier today and now it is completely missing.

more options

Right click the trash folder, select properties and then the repair button.

Does re indexing the file do anything here at all?

more options

Repair doesn't seem to help, no.

In the meantime, I've disabled the Retention Policy for this folder, as I'm becoming highly suspicious of that feature.

more options

Try "Rebuilding the Global Database" as per this very useful page: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database

more options

I've just observed Thunderbird adding messages to the Inbox that were already deleted. When I delete them again, they now appear as duplicates in the Trash.

I am going to also disable the "Leave messages on the server" feature to see if that helps.

more options

Hello there

Thank you for using Firefox.



Firefox volunteer

more options

Chosen Solution

I am happy to report that the problem is resolved after I did these three things:

1. Disabled the Retention Policy on the Trash folder, setting it to "Don't delete any messages."

2. Disabled the "Leave messages on the server" option for the affected account.

3. Upgraded to v60.9.0.

One or all of these things was likely flawed, so I will just avoid them going forward.

Thank you all for the ideas.

Modified by Robert Chapin