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How do I get rid of old archives?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by christ1

beachdolph
beachdolph
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I added an old Gmail account to my Thunderbird app on my Mac (newish MacBook Pro with Mavericks). I checked "Keep messages for this account on this computer" in the "Synchronization & Storage" section of Account Settings. I ended up with an archive folder that was 285GB! It took me nearly a month to figure out why my hard disk space was suddenly disappearing. . . Mavericks hides the Library folder, so it was hard to even find the archive file. Anyway, I unchecked the "Keep messages for this account on this computer" setting and the archive file quickly went down to 192GB. However, according to my hosting provider, the other IMAP address I have on Thunderbird is only 6GB in size. I have the box checked for that account, and I do want to locally archive that address. How do I get rid of all of this extra email archive? I don't need nearly 200GB of archived email!!!! My local hard drive is only 500GB!

I added an old Gmail account to my Thunderbird app on my Mac (newish MacBook Pro with Mavericks). I checked "Keep messages for this account on this computer" in the "Synchronization & Storage" section of Account Settings. I ended up with an archive folder that was 285GB! It took me nearly a month to figure out why my hard disk space was suddenly disappearing. . . Mavericks hides the Library folder, so it was hard to even find the archive file. Anyway, I unchecked the "Keep messages for this account on this computer" setting and the archive file quickly went down to 192GB. However, according to my hosting provider, the other IMAP address I have on Thunderbird is only 6GB in size. I have the box checked for that account, and I do want to locally archive that address. How do I get rid of all of this extra email archive? I don't need nearly 200GB of archived email!!!! My local hard drive is only 500GB!

All Replies (1)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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I'd first identify the largest folders. Right-click a folder in the folder pane - Properties Look for 'Size on disk'. What are your large folders? How does that relate to the number of messages in those folders?