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my mail is 20 gb but thunderbird folder only shows as being 2.6 gb. where is the stuff¿

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  • Last reply by udlap

udlap
udlap
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on my mail for mac the mail was stored in an mbox folder and every message was there and the whole folder is about 20gb. but when i look at the thunderbird folder and look in profiles i see files for inbox and inbox.msf etc, but the whole thunderbird folder is only like 2gb, even though when i use the program i see all the mails listed in the inbox column. so where are all the actual mails being stored offline¿ where are these 20gb of data being stored¿ i would like to know because i need to do some cleaning on my hard drive for space storage and i cant figure out how to free up the space or if it true that the stuff isn´t actually on my computer. I am confused. I hav looked online and found references to profiles and troubleshooting to find folder etc and have looked through all of that stuff but nothing seems to indicate an actual mass of mails and attachments stored on my actual computer. i am connected to an exchange account if that helps. Thanks for any help.

on my mail for mac the mail was stored in an mbox folder and every message was there and the whole folder is about 20gb. but when i look at the thunderbird folder and look in profiles i see files for inbox and inbox.msf etc, but the whole thunderbird folder is only like 2gb, even though when i use the program i see all the mails listed in the inbox column. so where are all the actual mails being stored offline¿ where are these 20gb of data being stored¿ i would like to know because i need to do some cleaning on my hard drive for space storage and i cant figure out how to free up the space or if it true that the stuff isn´t actually on my computer. I am confused. I hav looked online and found references to profiles and troubleshooting to find folder etc and have looked through all of that stuff but nothing seems to indicate an actual mass of mails and attachments stored on my actual computer. i am connected to an exchange account if that helps. Thanks for any help.

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Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
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re : but when i look at the thunderbird folder and look in profiles i see files for inbox and inbox.msf etc

MAC profile; http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird Mac OS X Profile folders are located here:

  • ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<Profile name>/

The tilde character (~) refers to the current user's Home folder, so ~/Library is the /Macintosh HD/Users/<username>/Library folder.

files for Inbox and Inbox.msf etc 'Inbox' with no extension is an mbox text file containing emails. 'Inbox.msf' is the indexing file and not emails. If there is an 'Inbox.sbd' folder then it means the Inbox has subfolders. 'Inbox.sbd' folder will contain the subfolder mbox and .msf files.

I would advise that you do not allow these simple mbox files to get too large as they can become difficult to open and contain a lot a emails in one text file.

To see what is store dint he text file. 'Inbox' mbox text file can be opened using a text editor program eg: Notepad++ Oldest email will be at the top.

Can you access/read the content of all your emails in 'Offline' mode ? Have you synchronised all your folders for offline use? If going into Offline mode is not auto set to download and synch: File > Offline > Download/ Sync now If you synchronise for offline use and go into offline mode, does this increase the size of those mbox files.

udlap
udlap Question owner
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Thanks for replying, i can see all the mail and attachments in offline mode. but the INBOX document (there is no folder, the file labeled inbox is in the main folder exquilla because i am using an exchange account and then the inbox is in the outlook sub folder) actually says zero bytes and the inbox.msf folder is 11 mb. the largest folder is mailbox attachments but it is only 1.08 gb. so when i checked in my back up of the old mail for mac program the inbox was 11 gb. so i guess i am still confused. does exquilla do some kind of massive compression of stuff in exchange accounts or how does that all work..