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I would like to be able to do trash deletion in Thunderbird by age instead of size.

  • 1 reply
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  • Last reply by gild

KC
KC
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Presently the trash is deleted (aka compacted) when doing so will free up a certain amount of disc space, and apparently this means that the messages with the biggest attachments are deleted first. As a result, messages with largish attachments recently sent to Trash (which are more likely to be needed again) disappear quickly, while old messages with no attachments hang around forever. I would like to be able to configure settings so that everything in trash older than a certain time period is deleted automatically but nothing younger that a certain time period is deleted without confirmation.

Thanks and best regards, Ken

Presently the trash is deleted (aka compacted) when doing so will free up a certain amount of disc space, and apparently this means that the messages with the biggest attachments are deleted first. As a result, messages with largish attachments recently sent to Trash (which are more likely to be needed again) disappear quickly, while old messages with no attachments hang around forever. I would like to be able to configure settings so that everything in trash older than a certain time period is deleted automatically but nothing younger that a certain time period is deleted without confirmation. Thanks and best regards, Ken

All Replies (1)

gild
gild
more options

You have the option to delete messages that are older than x days or to delete all but the last y messages. Check 'Tools - Account Settings - (select your account) Disk Space' You will see the choices shown in the attached screenshot.

Every message that is deleted from ANY mail folder, or moved (or copied) to another mail folder is still in the original folder, marked as deleted, but not yet removed. When it is marked as deleted, it is not visible in a folder list, but still takes up space in that folder.

To actually remove these messages, and reduce the size of the folder, it is necessary to 'COMPACT' the folder.

You can manually compact a single folder, or group of folders; or you can set Thunderbird to automatically compact ALL folders when it will save a user specified amount of space on the drive. (see second screenshot)

NOTE that visible messages in the 'Trash' are not included in a 'compact' operation and should not normally be automatically removed. BUT...
There is a setting in 'Tools - Account Settings - (select your account) Server Settings' that allows you to 'Empty trash on exit'. This marks all the messages in Trash as deleted and makes them eligible for removal by 'compaction'.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders


TB-38.3 Win10-PC