What does compacting do in thunderbird

How can I stop Thunderbird from constantly asking if I want to compact my folders? Click I accept the risk , to continue to the Config Editor. Search for the preference mail. To compact all folders on demand, go to the File menu and select Compact Folders. To compact an individual folder, right-click on the folder and select Compact.

Actually doing it would be the first step. Considering the details you provided it seems appropriate. Have you compacted lately? Don't want to. Good luck. Wayne Mery Top 25 Contributor Moderator. Search Support Search. Home Thunderbird Customize controls, Thunderbird options, Compacting folders. Note: Compact does not apply to accounts using the Maildir storage format.

Unlike MBOX, Maildir stores each message in a separate file, and deleting a message results in deleting the message file. Compact and purge means essentially the same. It only purges messages from mail files you have deleted mor moved already. Thank you christ1 for the link which explains compacting for Thunderbird.

I disagree that compacting and purging have essentially the same meaning. My Chambers dictionary says that to purge means to remove impurities, to clear undesirable elements elements and compacting means compressing. Version 91 comes out in several weeks, in which the language of the compact dialog has been greatly improved. When you install version 91, if compact causes problems, please create a new support topic.

On 15th August I saw a message from Thunderbird about compacting messages. If you're using offline folders and configured to AutoSync Thunderbird 3. The web page for some of these add-ons state they add a button to the toolbar.

However, it really just adds the button to the set of buttons available for the toolbar. The button is not displayed unless you customize the toolbar to actually add the button. You can customize the toolbar by right clicking on it, selecting customize, drag and drop the button to the toolbar, and then press OK. The Xpunge add-on lets you add a button to empty the trash and compact the folders in multiple accounts in one step.

You can also set a timer to automate that. The CompactFolder add-on lets you add a button to the toolbar to compact the currently selected folder. The Mozilla Add-ons web site has several other extensions that add buttons to compact folders. You cannot undo compacting, there is no such thing as "uncompacting". Compacting physically removes messages marked for deletion and hidden from view.

Once they're gone, they're gone. Usually when somebody asks how to "uncompact" a folder they lost messages due to compacting. Sometimes the messages were already gone, but that wasn't noticeable because they were still listed in the folder listing.

Other times compacting a folder physically removed messages it shouldn't have because the folder was too corrupt. If you suspect a folder is badly corrupted, don't compact it. It might make things worse because compacting depends upon Thunderbird being able to parse the mbox file the text file named after the folder that contains all of the messages for that folder and figure out where every message begins and ends.

Once Thunderbird starts to lose track of where each message begins and ends, compacting can cause the physical removal of other messages because it thinks other messages are part of the deleted message.

It's unusual but possible to lose every message in a folder by compacting it if the folder was badly corrupted.