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

Wannan tattunawa ta zama daɗaɗɗiya. Yi sabuwar tambaya idan ka na bukatar taimako.

When Archiving, does TB compress the files in any way or save them into a seperate folder?

Needs_a_Shave_and_a_Haircut
Needs_a_Shave_and_a_Haircut
more options

I guess the real question is, "Why Archive?" if all TB is doing is just creating a new subset of folders under the main "Archive" folder. What is the benefit to archiving if TB is not moving file history out of the 'active' directory to a separate 'inactive' directory. In other email systems I am familiar with, the purpose of archiving is to reduce down the volume of e-mails/folders so that the program doesn't have to index and search hundreds or thousands of active emails every time you open the program. (Either that or some corporate IT geek set a storage limit on my account. It is my understanding that the corp IT moves archived records to a separate server)

I guess the real question is, "Why Archive?" if all TB is doing is just creating a new subset of folders under the main "Archive" folder. What is the benefit to archiving if TB is not moving file history out of the 'active' directory to a separate 'inactive' directory. In other email systems I am familiar with, the purpose of archiving is to reduce down the volume of e-mails/folders so that the program doesn't have to index and search hundreds or thousands of active emails every time you open the program. (Either that or some corporate IT geek set a storage limit on my account. It is my understanding that the corp IT moves archived records to a separate server)

All Replies (2)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

Why Archive?

There are plenty of reasons, but they are probably different for different people. As an example, to me it makes a whole lot of sense to archive by year. If there is no benefit for you to archive messages in Thunderbird, simply don't do it.

reduce down the volume of e-mails/folders so that the program doesn't have to index and search hundreds or thousands of active emails

So that means archived messages cannot be searched anymore? Doen't sound useful to me.

corp IT moves archived records to a separate server

Which is really annoying.

Needs_a_Shave_and_a_Haircut
Needs_a_Shave_and_a_Haircut Mai mallakar tambaya
more options

I should have phrased the question better, 'Does TB save Archived messages into a separate directory on my pc, still searchable, but not part of the regular, non-archived file directory.'

Obviously, new folders are created in the Archive process, either by YYYY or YYYY_MM. I hope I didn't confuse anyone.

I think this is the most useful answer to the question: If there is no benefit for you to archive messages in Thunderbird, simply don't do it. But then why would anybody need to archive?