In my case, this freed up over 1 GB of disk space. The e-mails currently in the folder will remain untouched, but those e-mails you've deleted will be permanently removed. In order to recover this disk space (and permanently remove messages you've deleted), right-click on high-volume folders such as Inbox and Sent within Thunderbird and select the option "Compact This Folder". However, after 3 years of use, my Inbox file was over 1 GB in size! I don't keep e-mails after I've replied to them, so my Thunderbird Inbox normally has no more than 20 messages in it depending on how behind I am at replying to people.
You'll see a list of files, including "Inbox" and "Sent". Ls -lh ~/.thunderbird/fault/Mail/Local\ Folders/ Run the following command (substituting the random "garble".default that will exist in your Thunderbird settings) and you'll see what I mean: Permanently removing deleted e-mails to recover disk spaceĪlthough you might delete messages you no longer need, Thunderbird continues to store this information. Test it out by clicking a URL contained in an e-mail and see what happens. The next time you launch Thunderbird, the new behavior should take effect. Unless you've already did some user customizations to Thunderbird, this will probably create a new file. On my system this directory is called "fault", so that's what I'll use in this example. Look for a directory that starts with random letters and numbers and ends with ".default". If you want Firefox to open the link by default, you can follow these instructions:įirst, make sure you're not running Thunderbird. Permanently removing deleted messages to recover disk spaceĭownloading webmail (Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, etc.) directly into Thunderbirdīy default, clicking hyperlinks contained in the body of e-mails will not do anything. While Thunderbird is pretty usuable after a fresh install, this page contains some tips and add-ons for getting more out of Thunderbird. Thunderbird's installation is mentioned here. Thunderbird Tips and Add-ons Thunderbird Tips and Add-ons