Since all your messages are stored in All Mail, I rather doubt that the absence of a particular folder might make any difference to your quota. But if you are (or have been) in the habit of clearing your Trash folder regularly, maybe you have got on top of the eternal battle with google, who want to keep everything even when it's been deleted.

What is set under Server Settings for the Trash folder location? I'd expect a Trash folder to materialise out of thin air when it's needed.

You might be interested in the Folder Flags add-on. It allows you to nominate folders for special treatment and so give them the appropriate traits (super powers?) Using this add-on means that they get the appropriate icon, and those extras such as the "Empty trash" option on the context menu for the Trash folder, or the "Edit" button in a Drafts folder.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/folderflags/

I have to say that while I have used this add-on in the past, I haven't enabled it in Thunderbird recently. I've just enabled it, in TB52.5.2 and despite it saying it's good only up to TB38, it seems to work.

Under the sever settings i have "when i delete a message" set to move it to this folder -- and that folder is set to my one and only trash folder I have.

That folder will not show any messages ever being in it. Also yes i do try keeping ahead of Google, which seems to becoming a losing battle.

I will also look into the Folder Flags add-on, thank you for that suggestion.

Does you account have a [gmail] folder greyed out and a sub folders junk, trash and Sent mail?

Matt said

Does you account have a [gmail] folder greyed out and a sub folders junk, trash and Sent mail?

Yes i have a [gmail] folder with sub folders of Drafts, Sent mail, and All mail, but there is no trash folder under that [gmail] folder. The trash folder shows up outside of that folder tree.

Right click the account in the folder pane and select subscribe.

is the trash folder listed there in the account to subscribe to? It should be.

Matt said

Right click the account in the folder pane and select subscribe. is the trash folder listed there in the account to subscribe to? It should be.

Yes, I am subscribed to the trash folder.

Ok lets take a punt

Copy any mail that is currently in the sent foldr to the [gmail] sent mail folder.

Right click the account in the folder pane and select settings click server settings and then the advanced button. Insert [Gmail] in the server directory and ok your way out. Restart Thunderbird. Do you have a trash folder not in the folder pane? The [Gmail] sub folder will no longer be present.

Matt said

Ok lets take a punt Copy any mail that is currently in the sent foldr to the [gmail] sent mail folder. Right click the account in the folder pane and select settings click server settings and then the advanced button. Insert [Gmail] in the server directory and ok your way out. Restart Thunderbird. Do you have a trash folder not in the folder pane? The [Gmail] sub folder will no longer be present.

It was very interesting, that worked perfectly the trash folder appeared with the correct icon, it showed the current contents of the trash and was synced up well with Gmail, but all of my other folders disappeared and i couldn't find a way to get them back. I undid that and restarted and all of my folders came back but the trash was right back to the way it was before.

Gmail's organization of the folders seems to really annoy some users. It irks them that this account is inconsistent with all their other accounts. (These same users often want to eradicate Local Folders too.)

What you need to do is move your folders into the [Gmail] folder before applying Matt's advice. So you rescue them before they become invisible.

I tried it on one gmail account and while there was a superficial improvement in Thunderbird, it made some of the views of this account in alternative mail clients (on phone, tablet etc) more complicated.

Given that I have other accounts with their own quirks (I have two, based on outlook and roundcube, that only permit user-defined folders inside Inbox, not alongside it) I have come to accept that we can't get everything sweet and harmonious. So the [Gmail] folder is, for me, just another wrinkle in life's bedspread.

Zenos said

Gmail's organization of the folders seems to really annoy some users. It irks them that this account is inconsistent with all their other accounts. (These same users often want to eradicate Local Folders too.) What you need to do is move your folders into the [Gmail] folder before applying Matt's advice. So you rescue them before they become invisible. I tried it on one gmail account and while there was a superficial improvement in Thunderbird, it made some of the views of this account in alternative mail clients (on phone, tablet etc) more complicated. Given that I have other accounts with their own quirks (I have two, based on outlook and roundcube, that only permit user-defined folders inside Inbox, not alongside it) I have come to accept that we can't get everything sweet and harmonious. So the [Gmail] folder is, for me, just another wrinkle in life's bedspread.

Yeah I am beginning to see this and it makes me very disappointed, but thank you all so much for your help. I am going to play around with it some more and see which options works out for me because I also use the account across multiple platforms and I will see what works best with the least amount of complications.