What folders? Simple question, complex answer depending you which they are.

Fundamentally any folder that has a yellow icon should be able to be deleted. If it is a special folder icon, you will need to clear it's use in settings somewhere before you can actually delete it. Email if not free form art. You can not delete things the program is using, or thinks it is.

For example of these folders only two can be deleted. The InAddressbook because it is a saved search and the biglist as it is a "normal" folder.

Thanks for the information. However the 4 folders are just "ordinary" folders with a yellow folder icon next to each one, as shown in the first screenshot. The 2nd screenshot is the error message I got when I tried to rename Test2 to Test3. I'm guessing a Thunderbird file is corrupted, though I'm not sure how to fix it.

Go to the account setting on the menu. Under server settings for a mail account or under local folders for that account is a local directory.

Note the part of the directory name shown after the \mail\ part

Goto the troubleshooting information on the help menu and select the "Open folder" button beside the Profile folder entry. Open the mail folder in the file manager window that opened. Now navigate to the folder you noted in the local directory as being after the \mail\ part. that should contain a file called trash.msf another called trash. and a folder called trash.sdb. Open the trash.sdb You should now see the files old, old2,test etc. These again should be an MSF file and a file with no extension.

We could just delete these files with Thunderbird closed, but I would like to try and figure out why they are not going when you press the delete key. (You are pressing it aren't you)

Pick the old files (old. and old.msf) and right click them and select properties. Is the file read only?

Thanks for the advice. I did approximately what you said. (I have Thunderbird set up so all email is in a folder I've named "EMail-TBird", which contains the subfolder Trash.sbd and other folders.) Opening Trash.sbd showed the files and subfolders you mentioned. None were marked as read only. With Thunderbird closed, I deleted Old(2).msf and Old(2) with no problem, and when I reopened TBird indeed Old(2) was gone, so the problem is basically solved. However since you said you wanted to try to figure out why the other folders won't delete from TBird, I've left them alone for the moment. If you want me to try something else I'll be happy to do so; otherwise I'll delete them in the near future.

(I should mention that Trash.sbd also contains an empty subfolder named PersonalAdd.sbd, which does *not* show up in TBird. It may be something I deleted long ago but since it doesn't show up in TBird I never noticed it. Again, I plan to delete it shortly.)

I had a similar problem. (Not sure why the labels on this page are in Spanish, but whatever.) Anyway, I also was unable to delete some subfolders of the Local Folders > Trash folder in Thunderbird 115 (note: I am using Thunderbird 115 on a Macbook). But I got rid of them very easily from within TB, not in the profile folder Matt suggested:

1. Right-click on the folder that won't delete in the normal way. 2. Choose "Move to > Local Folders > Trash", and nothing appears to happen -- the problem folder is still there 3. But then right-click on Trash and choose Empty Trash, and magically the folders disappear!

At least that's what happened for me, and they are still gone after I closed TB and restarted it.

Good luck, and let us know if that worked for you.

Thanks for the input, and I'm glad it worked for you. I never "empty" the trash, but rather periodically permanently delete those files in the trash that are over a month old - I've more than once gone back to retrieve a trashed file that I later realized I wanted. However I've now deleted the remaining problem files/folders in trash.sbd and everything seems fine.