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

After a migration of emails from another computer, I am unable to compact folders to allow more space for new messages

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

more options

Imported messages from thunderbird operating on another computer. The inbox was full so I moved a lot of messages to another folder then tried to compact the folders. Nothing happened. There was no message, as there usually is, saying that the folders were compacting. My inbox is still showing as full and I cannot download new messages.

Imported messages from thunderbird operating on another computer. The inbox was full so I moved a lot of messages to another folder then tried to compact the folders. Nothing happened. There was no message, as there usually is, saying that the folders were compacting. My inbox is still showing as full and I cannot download new messages.

All Replies (2)

more options

Is it possible an antivirus program is scanning the folder and preventing compacting to complete? If the Inbox is 'frozen', you could rebuild it according to these instructions:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders#Real_fix

You copy the current messages to another folder (which you seem to have done), then delete the Inbox mbox and msf files (while TB is closed), then restart TB to automatically create a new Inbox. If it's an IMAP account, the Inbox messages will download from the IMAP server.