Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

Inbox Full? Emptied trash and compacted, but what when I can't do that?

  • 3 cavab
  • 2 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

Got the message instructing the inbox was full and I needed to delete messages and compact. Tried moving a few thousand messages into other folders but that didn't help. Deleted all trash and then compacted the folders and that solved it, for now. But how much is "Full"? I have messages going back to 1999 stored in various folders, which I presume are subfolders of my inbox. What do I do when I have deleted trash and compacted and it is still "Full", if that ever occurs? Is there something I can do to ensure that does not happen?

Got the message instructing the inbox was full and I needed to delete messages and compact. Tried moving a few thousand messages into other folders but that didn't help. Deleted all trash and then compacted the folders and that solved it, for now. But how much is "Full"? I have messages going back to 1999 stored in various folders, which I presume are subfolders of my inbox. What do I do when I have deleted trash and compacted and it is still "Full", if that ever occurs? Is there something I can do to ensure that does not happen?

All Replies (3)

more options

First off if emptying trash helped, is your account IMAP? It sounds to me like you might be running into IMAP server quotas. That is your server account is full.

Thunderbird does buck if individual folders exceed 4Gb. But emptying the trash should not help in that situation, unless it was it that was full.

more options

If memory serves correctly, I have a POP server, and mail at the provider is deleted after I download it to my desktop. However, checking the properties of my inbox, after deleting trash and compacting, the size is 3.7 Gb. It IS that big. I have messages going back to 1999. So what do I do now if my ceiling is 4 gig?

more options

What I have a a collection of folders in lovcal folders for mail going back years and years in categories.

Or you could archive your mail. That would create new folders for each year going back as far as your mail goes and put the mail from your inbox into them. Really leaving mail in the inbox folder is a recipe for disaster. It only takes on mail with a virus attached for most antivirus programs to delete the entire inbox when you click fix.