This "complaint" usually comes from folks that have IMAP mail accounts and do not know their provider periodically empties the trash for them (removes old deleted mail) and the changed data is synchronized to Thunderbird from the providers server.

The lesson is trash is trash, it is not a place to store mail you want or even might want in more than about a week.

Thanks so much, Matt. Apologies for my ignorance. I've contacted my provider and they've confirmed that that is what they've been doing. I think they've changed their policy recently because previously deleted emails were kept for several months at least. Anyway, I appreciate your advice. I'll now transfer any emails I need to keep into my notes folder, I guess.

Johnpring said

Thanks so much, Matt. Apologies for my ignorance. I've contacted my provider and they've confirmed that that is what they've been doing. I think they've changed their policy recently because previously deleted emails were kept for several months at least. Anyway, I appreciate your advice. I'll now transfer any emails I need to keep into my notes folder, I guess.

You could make you provider happy and yourself if you really want to hang onto deleted mail.

Right click the account in the folder pane and select settings from the menu. in Server settings for the account, change the location for deleted messages from the trash/Deleted folder on your providers mail account to the trash folder on Local folders.

Doing that will not leave deleted mail on the server, it will only be available on your local machine, but it will be there until you delete it, or your computer hard drive dies.

Thanks, Matt. I have tried that, but the only options it shows that I can send my deleted messages to are those under that particular mail account. It doesn't give the deleted folder under local folders as an option...

Argh! I have given that same advice myself in the past but checking it now, I see you're right; it offers only folders in the same account.

Archives, Drafts and Sent can all be directed to use whatever folder you want. I can't see why Trash is exempted.

Looking in Config Editor to see how the trash folder is set up, I see it just gives a folder name and not a path, so the trash folder is always specified relative to its parent account. I tried pasting in the URI of the Local Folders/Trash folder but this is quietly rejected. The Trash folder setting in account settings shows that it effectively isn't set, so you have to resort to the limited drop-down list of the account's own folders.

I thought this might be a POP vs IMAP thing (Matt and I have both been here long enough to be able to remember POP being the default) but in a POP-connected account, you don't even get the option to set the folder to be used for Trash.

Maybe you could create your own user-defined wastebin folder inside the IMAP account and set Thunderbird to use it. However I can't be confident that the server wouldn't pick up on this and take over the management of your wastebin folder.

You could use an add-on (QuickFolders) that lets you set up tabs for folders. These tabs appear across the top of your mailbox lists, and you can drag and drop messages onto them. So you could put your Local Folders Trash up there. But of course you then have to remember to drag and drop rather than jut hit delete.

You could set up a filter to move all the contents from Trash to Local Folders, but you'd have to remember to run it manually every now and again.

Bottom line is: don't delete things you might want to look at again. People wouldn't think of putting paper rubbish into the wastebasket and expect it to remain there indefinitely.

Thanks, it's a bad habit picked up from working at a large organisation that just left my trash folder alone. But it's OK, I'll drag and drop emails into my notes folder from now once I've dealt with them. I need to keep my inbox reasonably clear because I get too anxious about workload otherwise... appreciate your help.