neither is better than the other really. But deleting from the operating system has the benefit of not copying it to the trash folder in Thunderbird. Holding the shift key in Thunderbird should however perform the same function, bypass the internal trash folder..Just shift and press the delete key. (No right click)

Matt, thanks for your help, but Shift and the Delete key does nothing. This is a very ancient G4 running 10.3.9.

I am afraid that if I copy 6,000 messages to Trash in TB, it will corrupt the folder again and the 6,000 messages will reappear in the Inbox. (It happened a couple of days ago when I Trashed 1,500 messages at once.) I have removed the .msf files from the Inbox and Trash and restarted, rebuilt Preferences with Disk Utility, and run Disk Warrior. Everything is normal except the nstmp folder.

Can I remove the nstmp, nstmp.msf, and nstmp.sbd files from the Profile and throw them in the Mac Trash without screwing up the computer?

The answer to your question should be yes.

1. 1 nstmp folders should not be showing in Thunderbird UI

1. 2 nstmp folders in the OS direcotry should only have messages that are the result of an incomplete compact operation. As such, a) there should not be a corresponding nstmp folder on the mail server, b) the messages contained in nstmp should still be in the original folder, therefore c) it should be possible to just throw away the folder

If you determine that 2c is in fact true, then you should be able to shutdown Thunderbird, and delete the nstmp folder in the OS

ref: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Nstmp_folders http://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/05/nstmp-folders-in-thunderbird/

Wayne, I've seen that page and it does NOT answer my question.

There are 3 nstmp documents in Profiles.

nstmp nstmp.msf nstmp.sbd

Do I close TB, throw all 3 in the Mac Trash, empty it, restart and the nstmp folder will be gone, but everything else will be normal?

Per my previous post, yes