When was the last time you compacted your folders?

I've been using TB for years and never compacted folders as I clean out mailboxes regularly. Never been a problem until recently.

Compacting is something that should be done regularly, particularly with the larger folders. Deleting messages doesn't get rid of them. It just hides them from view. Compacting gets rid of them and frees up space in your folders Just right click on each folder and select 'compact'.

I'll give it a try and see what happens. It will be awhile before I can report on the success.

I would think that deleting an e-mail would move it from the folder it is in to the trash folder. If that were true, there would be no need to compact. I clean out my sent mail and trash at the beginning of each month. You would think if the software was written properly there would be no need to compact.

I tend to agree with you about the software with regard to the compacting.

Give it a try. If it works it will be an easy fix.

I've compacted all my folders. Program is still slow to delete messages. Any other suggestions?

Here is something else to try.

If the problem is mainly when deleting messages, and you have already disabled McAfee from acting on mail folders, try this first before setting up a new profile: select Help/Troubleshooting Information, click Show Folder to open the profile folder, exit TB, open the Mail (for POP accounts) or ImapMail (for IMAP accounts) folders, then the subfolders that are named for each account. In those subfolders, delete the Trash and Trash.msf files, then restart TB and see if you still have problems deleting messages.

Will I lose the messages in these folders?

Seems like a lot of trouble for what shouldn't be a problem.

Also each account has multiple trash folders and files. Here are screenshots of the folders, gmail, mediacom, and the local folder under mail that seems to have the mediacom information.

None of these files are very large.

Each mail folder (Inbox, Sent, etc.) is stored as two files; one with no extension (e.g. INBOX), which is the mail file itself (in ‘mbox’ format), and one with an .MSF extension (e.g. INBOX.MSF), which is the index (Mail Summary File) to the mail file.

Your messages are not in the msf files. After you delete these files and restart Thunderbird, it will rebuild these files. If there was a problem in one of these, it should be gone after restarting.

Originally you stated to "delete the Trash and Trash.msf files" This had me concerned deleting both. Are you you now saying to delete only the msf files?

Also the problem is not deleting from trash, but from inbox in both POP3 and IMAP folders and spam in the IMAP.

Remember my original question stated it was slow in all folders except trash. So does that mean delete all msf files?

Please be specific and clear in instructions. I don't want to mess up this program.

Just delete the msf files. They are the index files for each folder.

Done. We will see how it goes. I'll let you know if successful on delete time or not.

Thanks for the assistance.

The deletion of msf files seems to have helped the deletion problem. However a new issue has occurred since the deletion. When the program checks mail, the green status bar appears in the lower RH corner, and never goes away. When you try to type a message, type is delayed in appearing. This is really bothersome. Will this require removal and re-load of the software? Can this be done without losing my e-mail that I currently have from my POP3 account as that is downloaded and is filed for future reference?

I saw elsewhere that when the computer was restarted, they said this issue went away. Don't worry, you can save your email messages if the program is reloaded. Let's go one step at a time. I understand this is annoying for you. One problem at a time is more than enough.

I did a restart before I posted on the issue. Any further suggestions?

Have looked around but found nothing that might help.

Suggestions:

if you have any type of antivirus running, turn it off

start Thunderbird with add-ons disabled

start your operating system in safe mode

If any of these help, it will point to the problem.

I keep thinking that time will solve this but I am probably wrong.

Let me know tomorrow if anything has changed or not.

Don't use any add on software. Also it seems time did take care of this latest issue.

Thanks for the help.

John