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How do I purge old email from gmail pop server?

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detlefo
detlefo
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I just installed Thunderbird on a new system and connected to my gmail accounts resulting in downloading thousands of old emails. How do I get rid of all these old emails permanently? When I delete them locally they seem to come back.

I just installed Thunderbird on a new system and connected to my gmail accounts resulting in downloading thousands of old emails. How do I get rid of all these old emails permanently? When I delete them locally they seem to come back.

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Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
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When you delete they should go into the pop account 'Trash' folder. You can empty Trash: Right click on Trash folder and select 'Empty Deleted'

You can select to remove emails off server when you download or when you select 'Delete':

  • right click on pop mail account in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
  • Select 'Server Settings'

To remove emails upon download:

  • Uncheck 'Leave messages on server'

To keep on server until you manually delete:

  • Select 'Leave message on server'
  • select 'Until I delete them'

You can also set up Trash to auto empty upon exit:

  • Select 'Empty Trash folder on Exit'
  • click on 'OK'

When you delete emails they are not fully deleted. they are marked as deleted and hidden. To fully remove: Right click on eg: 'Inbox' and select 'Compact'.

Note: Gmail stores all emails in the 'All Mail' folder and only deleted emails put in the server 'Deleted Items' folder. As Pop accounts cannot have access to the server 'Deleted Items' folder, when you delete in a pop account, only the label is deleted, so the email may still be in the server 'All Mail' folder. This means you periodically may need to check the webmail account and remove emails from the 'All Mail' folder.

If you are deleting emails and they are reappearing despite being put into Trash, there could be some corruption in Inbox. Create some folders and move all wanted emails into those folders. You should not really use the Inbox as a permanent store. Delete what is not wanted and then compact the Inbox folder. Remember to empty and compact the 'Junk' folder as well.

See good advice here:

Also, suggest you stop any Anti-Virus product from scanning emailsas they download or folders as this can cause corruption or even loss of emails. Info on this here:

Info on compacting: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

Remember to periodically create a backup of your Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird folder as it contains everything you may need in case of recovery or move to another computer.