--I may be treading on thin ice regarding my habit of saving all email and am seeking advice on how to do it properly so as to ensure I don't have issues going forward as the years stack up.-- I never empty my Thunderbird trash bin. I've found this invaluable as many times questions come up regarding years old emails (emails that I could never anticipate I'd need) that can only be answered by searching through years worth of emails to find the answer. Many, many times this technique has paid off as I've found answers to my questions in years old emails that I never thought I'd need ...emails that if I'd permanently deleted, I'd be left with no answers. I do compact my folders but as I mentioned, never get rid of any of the emails in my deleted folder. Is this OK or am I setting my self up for failure? And BTW, the not long ago change in Thunderbird that produces the message when deleting emails from the "Inbox" that says something like, "...compact your folder to purge messages..." always scares me off as I do not want any messages "purged" from any folders so I always select the "cancel" option and then right click on a folder to compact it. ...No doubt there's something about this whole process I don't understand. Is there a proper way to keep all deleted email that still allows me to use the "Edit>Find> Search Messages" function to search all past emails at once? Thank you An ancillary question to this is does "purging" emails do the same thing as "deleting" email?