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How to purge Offline Messages

  • 3 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 11 views
  • Last reply by david

romainroad
romainroad
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A while ago, I had to work offline so I had TB download my Gmail account messages. Now I no longer want these messages to be stored locally, because the Thunderbird folder is up to 10Gb, so I unchecked the box in Synchronization for 'Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer'. I was hoping the TB would subsequently purge the offline folders, but apparently not. Is there a way to clean out the folders without affecting my online Gmail folders as in Inbox and Sent folders?

A while ago, I had to work offline so I had TB download my Gmail account messages. Now I no longer want these messages to be stored locally, because the Thunderbird folder is up to 10Gb, so I unchecked the box in Synchronization for 'Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer'. I was hoping the TB would subsequently purge the offline folders, but apparently not. Is there a way to clean out the folders without affecting my online Gmail folders as in Inbox and Sent folders?

All Replies (3)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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assuming this is IMAP, you could delete the folder from windows file explorer when TB not running and then restart TB.

romainroad
romainroad Question owner
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Mmmm, that sounds pretty risky. Are you talking about the folders called imap.gmail-1.com, imap.gmail-2.com etc that are stored in a folder with a name like this one, 6a58itse.default-release? If so, is there any chance that this could affect my Gmail accounts?

david
david
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I am referring only to message folders, such as inbox, inbox.msf. The fact that you have gmail-1.com and gmail-2.com indicates there have been problems with the account. Being an IMAP account, any message files in those folders are likely overlaps, and that may be why you are seeing 10gb of use. I would look to see which message file is most current.