Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

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

After Windows-to-Mac migration, I have redundant folders in folder pane, and can't get rid of them.

  • 8 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

In recently moving from Windows to Mac, I wound up merging Profiles. Now i have redundant Inbox, Sent, Draft, and Trash files under Local folder, and there's no delete option. As an experiment, I followed Trash to its Profile home, verified it was empty, and deleted both Trash and Trash.msf. Next time I started the computer, TextEdit facsimiles of the two folders were back in the Profile! Everything is working fine, but I would like to clean up my Folder Pane!

In recently moving from Windows to Mac, I wound up merging Profiles. Now i have redundant Inbox, Sent, Draft, and Trash files under Local folder, and there's no delete option. As an experiment, I followed Trash to its Profile home, verified it was empty, and deleted both Trash and Trash.msf. Next time I started the computer, TextEdit facsimiles of the two folders were back in the Profile! Everything is working fine, but I would like to clean up my Folder Pane!

All Replies (8)

more options

Local folders is not an optional part of Thunderbird. There used to be an add-on that hid it, but I would not recommend doing so as it provides local storage. most useful for email archives you no longer want on the mail server, or for that matter duplicates of those you want to be sure to keep.

more options

Thanks for the response. I'm afraid I wasn't clear. I don't want to get rid of Local Folders per se, and appreciate their utility. But I have my working Trash, Sent, Draft, and Inbox folders elsewhere, so the ones appearing under Local Folders are not being used, and just cluttering things up. It's these subfolders I'd like to get rid of.

more options

perhaps my wording was not clear by local folders I meant the whole shebang, including the default folders. Do you have a POP mail account in Thunderbird?

more options

Yes, I do have a POP account on the same server. It's the one I'm transitioning from to the IMAP account on the iMac, which is the one I want to clean up. The Profile now in use by the IMAP account was pieced together from the default setup when I first opened the account on the Mac, and the one in use on the POP account. That account is still open, as I haven't yet had the guts to completely burn that bridge. I'm sure my little problem is a result of my combining the two profiles. Dick

more options

I was going to suggest o use the local folders for the pop account. But that will not help after it goes away.

Unfortunately IMAP accounts must have their own folders and can not use the local folders.

more options

Thanks again, Matt. I gather that I'm stuck looking at these empty and useless folders as subfolders under Local Folders. I'm a bit surprised that in such a neat and tidy application as Thunderbird there's no simple way to get rid of them. Dick

more options

After you have added three or four more accounts, and maybe a dozen or more subfolders, then Local Folders will start to look a lot less significant. Collapse them if their appearance offends you.

Mine are busy and useful. Newsgroups, rss feeds, Saved Search folders, offline email archives.

more options

As I said in the beginning there is an add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/hide-local-folders/

But it has not been updated for the current version as yet. I still do not recommend it as it will hide your outbox, but use it if you like.