Draft messages sometimes don't get deleted when I send the message
Intermittently, I will find many copies of a draft message in my drafts folder even though I have sent the message to which the draft related. This is confusing because obviously at first it makes it seem that the message never went out. It also creates extra work for me to have to go through the drafts and figure out which ones are safe to delete. I've seen this issue before, that it didn't happen for a while, but now it's happening again. I'm on Windows 7 Professional with all the important updates, and now at version 38.1 of Thunderbird. Compacting the drafts folder didn't help. Restarting Thunderbird didn't help. Updating Thunderbird from 38.0 didn't help -- at least not yet. It would seem that the program should be able to clean up after itself in the sense of deleting drafts that were saved before the corresponding finished message was actually sent out. But maybe not.
It also seems like only one draft should ever get created and saved while you are working on the message. The saving of the next draft should delete the previous draft. Or there could be an option to turn off "save multiple drafts." I don't see anything about drafts in the Options. Anyway, if this is the way it worked, then at most one draft would be left over when you send the message and the draft fails to get deleted.
All Replies (6)
Is this an IMAP account? If so, it's probably better to store message drafts in the "Drafts" folder on Local Folders, under Tools/Account Settings/accountname/Copies & Folders.
Thanks for the reply and suggestion, but it's a POP account.
In that case, I would try rebuilding the Drafts folder by opening the profile folder (Help/Troubleshooting Information/Show Folder), closing TB, and deleting the mbox and index files (Drafts and Drafts.msf) in the Mail/accountname subfolder. Restart TB, and a new Drafts folder will be automatically created when you compose a message.
I am running TB 38.5.0 under Win 7, and have the same problem; multiple incomplete in-composition copies being saved in Drafts, and then not deleted after Send. I just realized this, and see Drafts copies going back to early Sept. 2015 so it appears to be an existing bug pre-dating 38.5.0. PLS NOTE: I have Auto-Save set to 5 mins., so I know why drafts are being saved, what I can't figure out is why the drafts remain after I Send (I never manually ask to Save),
To Mark B.: is the account POP or IMAP, and did you try rebuilding the Drafts folder as suggested in my previous post?
My experience of this problem is that the drafts are not LEFT in my drafts folder after I have sent the message, rather that they APPEAR later, apparently downloaded from Mozilla' server when I receive fresh emails. The problem is intermittent, and often several part-completed copies of a message appear, in varying levels of completion. Usually some time passes between when I write the emails and when the drafts appear. It is usually the next day or even later.