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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

In OE, I deleted the entire folders when they got too full. How in TB?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by Zenos

drooyoo
drooyoo
more options

Long time Outlook Express user, first time Thunderbird user. I get an ungodly amount of email on a daily basis. In Outlook Express, when the folders got too full and cluttered (after compacting was no longer effective), I drilled into the actual mail storage area and deleted the entire Inbox file. When I restarted OE, it rebuilt the file anew. How do I do the same in Thunderbird? At present, I have 671 messages in one folder, 550 in another (after deleting 450 and 500 respectively). This (671 + 550) is one week's worth of emails. HELP!  ;) If I could figure out how to block some senders and automatically delete certain emails, that would be great! So far, I've only been able to redirect them from the inbox to other folders.

Long time Outlook Express user, first time Thunderbird user. I get an ungodly amount of email on a daily basis. In Outlook Express, when the folders got too full and cluttered (after compacting was no longer effective), I drilled into the actual mail storage area and deleted the entire Inbox file. When I restarted OE, it rebuilt the file anew. How do I do the same in Thunderbird? At present, I have 671 messages in one folder, 550 in another (after deleting 450 and 500 respectively). This (671 + 550) is one week's worth of emails. HELP! ;) If I could figure out how to block some senders and automatically delete certain emails, that would be great! So far, I've only been able to redirect them from the inbox to other folders.

All Replies (3)

Zenos
Zenos
more options

Ctrl+A will select all the messages being displayed in a folder. Del does the rest.

drooyoo
drooyoo Question owner
more options

I found the answer myself. The files I was trying to locate are found under C:\Users\*Name*\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\Mail. Simply deleting will work for a short time, but large volumes of emails eventually corrupt the .msf files making it necessary to delete and rebuild them. Thanks for trying.

Zenos
Zenos
more options

Yes, I know where the data files are stored. I also know that I don't know what mechanisms are in place to create them if missing nor what unexpected side-effects there might be.

Fiddling "under the hood" like this would be a last resort. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone until the proper method had been unsuccessful.

However I am pleased that you have found something that works for you.