If you do not Compact your folders you have not freed up any space. Compact is Thunderbird's poorly named term for complete removal of deleted files. Read about it here.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_Tips_:_Compacting_Folders

nope.. I regularly compact the folders. This does not solve my problem.

G

Google drive and mail share quota... got a music or Video collection filling the space perhaps.

This is exactly the point... why do they keep on sharing the quota if I move all the mail in the local folders?

How can I make them stop sharing the quota, without losing any mail?

G

How big is the 'All Mail' folder in webmail account? This is gmail archive folder, it keeps a record of everything. If you have an email in any folder, it will have a copy in 'All Mail'. If you delete anything from 'All Mail' folder then it will get deleted from all other folders that contain a copy/label. Read some info : If you delete a message from your inbox or one of your custom folders in your IMAP client, it will still appear in [Gmail]/All Mail. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6581?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78755?hl=en

How many emails are in your 'Sent' folder becaue the 'All Mail' will also have a copy of those as well ?

wow! the all mail folder includes 20,000 emails, although the sent and inbox folders only contain a few emails !!

So this is what happened! Even if I copied all the mail in my local folders in Thunderbird, all the emails are still there in the imap folder!

Can I safely delete them from gmail? Will the copies saved with Thunderbird in my local folders be safe? Should I set my synchronization settings in any particular way to prevent any loss from my Thunderbird local folders?

Please let me know!!!

Thank you so much for your help :-)

G

Emails stored in Thunderbird Local Folders are not connected to the IMAP server, so should not be effected by anything you do on the rserver or IMAP mail account.

You should however, backup those emails to an external drive as they will be the only copy once you have deleted emails from 'All Mail'.

You could use an addon tool called ImportExportTool

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

download the .xpi fie to desktop or downloads folder. In Thunderbird Tools > Addons or Menu icon > Addons click on gear wheel icon and select : Install addon from file' locate the file you downloaded and click on Open You will need to restart Thunderbird.

Right click on 'local Folders' or any folder within Local Folders and select 'ImportExporttool' - there are various export options. see example image below.

ok I downloaded and installed the ImportExportTool. I am now quite puzzled about the many ways of making the backup...

If I select the whole Local Folders and choose the "Export to folder" option (with subfolders) it takes ages ... and a lot of the files created are apparently empty (0 bites). I also often get messages about a script which stopped working, therefore I think this is not a good option. Maybe the folders are so big that the software gets stuck. If I do it for one subfolder at a time, it seems to work...

On the other hand, if I choose the option "export all messages in the folder" it takes a huge amount of time even for a very small subfolder...

So I am now trying to do one folder at a time.. but even in this case, I don't know what option I should use.

I need to save both text and attachments in a way that the folder where I export the mail can be archived in an external disk, and the whole content imported in a new installation of Thunderbird, if the system crashes... What is the best option?

cheers, Gianluca

That doesn't sound right? How big is your local folders? Did you compact those as well? Lots of attachments?

You could use Mozbackup (which 'zips' your entire profile) just to be safe.

I routinely compact everything. The local folders is very big... can't answer right now, since it is exporting it :-)

Where can I find this Mozbackup? Is it another tool that can be downloaded?

BTW, I noticed that I receive an error msg on the script EACH and every time I run the tool "export folder with structure", irrespective of the size of the folder. The msg pops up at the end of the procedure, but the process is apparently complete (i.e. all the messages seem to appear in the backup, either as eml files, or as files with no extension that can be opened with a text editor).

Now I understand why it takes time. You are exporting as .eml That takes time. You just want to safe keep them. Use export folders with subfolders. That copies your mboxes.

MozBackup: how to at http://kb.mozillazine.org/MozBackup and download at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mozbackup/

if I use the command export folder with subfolders (with structure), two different things will happen:

1. the folder has no subfolder -> in this case, only one file with no extension and the same name of the folder is created. If opened with a text editor, all the messages are inside, including lines for the headers, etc., in what it seems to be HTML language

2. the folder has subfolders -> in this case, both a folder with the extension ".sbd", and a file with the same name are created in the same position; this latter file is empty. Inside the folder, there are other folders, with the same name of the mail subfolders, with the extension "mozmsgs". Inside these ones, there are the wdseml files. Each eml file correspond to a single message.

sorry I made a mistake.

If there are no subfolders in the original mail folder, the command "export folder with subfolder with subfolders (with structure)" is not available.

Only the "export folder" command is.

re: Where can I find this Mozbackup? Is it another tool that can be downloaded?

MozBackup is good tool for backing up an entire Profile. This is the website.

• http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

The link above has more info, the link below takes you directly to 'download page - also accessible via website link above.

• http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/download.php

Other MozBackup info:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/MozBackup

right, but if you instead choose local folder there will be plenty

But first open tools/importexporttools/options /exportdirectories and choose a new place for mbox

Helpful hint: Generally, most emails are only a few kb in size. However, attachments can increase the size of an email to several Mb.

If you right click on attachment and select 'detach', you can save the attachment to a location; another folder outside of Thunderbird. You can still click on the attachment in the email to open the saved attachment as a link replaces the actual attachment.

What does this mean? The size of your email is reduced significantly, so making space in the folder/mbox file and reducing size of Profile. This makes backups of emails and folders quicker. You can then also backup the folder containing attachments separately. If the folder containing emails gets corrupted or lost, you will not lose the attachment; which quite often may be more important than the actual email.

i don't know why, but now I have a lot of duplicate emails in the local folders, and the software is AWFULLY slow as I try to delete the duplicates!!

How can I do???

Set TB to run offline (File/Work Offline) exit TB

For safety, just copy all of your profile somewhere. not the best way to do it but anyway you have a copy.

If your brave enough.... In your "profile-folder" / mail / local folders delete all *.msf TB will rebuild them. start TB Do you still have duplicates? compact all folders (file / compact folders)

going offline doesn't help... why did you add: "exit TB"?

... and no, I'm not brave enough :-)

G

I have roughly 20,000 emails in the all mail gmail folder... does anyone know how I can delete a certain interval, e.g. from 15,000 to 20,000, instead of deleting page after page (100 emails at a time)?