Reduce the folder size of Thunderbird to free up disk space
Today when I wanted to install a new program on my version of Windows I noticed that I only had 50 Megabytes of storage left on the partition. This was troubling as I had only Windows installed on the drive and a couple of applications, which certainly should not fill the 10 Gigabyte partition to the brim.
So, I checked for the largest folders and files on the partition and discovered that the Thunderbird email client was using more than 3 Gigabytes of space in the application data folder on that partition.
I only had about 100 mails in the mailbox at that time but the size of the folder itself was listed with 500 Megabytes.
That's a lot of storage for 100 mails. I remembered that Thunderbird did not delete the mails right away even though they had been deleted from the trash or spam folder.
What happens when you delete emails is that they only get flagged but kept in the mailbox until it is compressed.
This was the cause for the discrepancy between the meager amount of mails and their size, and the big huge mail folders on my c: partition.
The solution nevertheless is pretty easy. All that needs to be done is to compact the folders which removes all deleted mails immediately. I was able to reduce the folder size of my Thunderbird folder from a size of more than three Gigabytes to 300,000 Kilobytes freeing up valuable disk space on my main partition.
Just right-click a folder and select compact this folder to remove all deleted emails and keep only emails that are visible in Thunderbird. You could check the Disk Space option to automatically compact folders if that saves a defined amount of kilobytes (You find the option under the advanced tab under Network & Disk Space in the Thunderbird options).
Here you can define the threshold in Megabytes that Thunderbird will use to determine whether to compact mail folders or not. Make sure the "compact all folders when it will save over" is checked.
If disk space is low on your computer, reduce the 20 Megabyte value further, for instance to 5 Megabyte. This effectively means that Thunderbird will compact a folder whenever 5 or more Megabyte of data can be freed up by doing so.
Prime candidates for the compact command are the inbox, trash and sent folders of each mailbox that you are using in the email client.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!