What is your account IMAP or POP3 Imap have you subscribed to trash?

As I said, IMAP. Yes. Trash is subscribed.

Your trash folder is empty and compacted? Do you get the same error if you move it to Local Folder / Trash ? Who is your mail-server-provider?

Hello. Sorry for delay in my reply.

- The Trash folder is empty - Yes it is compacted - This is our company e-mail system - It is not possible to select Local Folders / anything as a trash folder, the only choices that appear are Inbox (and its subfolders) and 'shared' which is the toplevel of our (very very large) hierarchy of company e-mail

The strange thing is that when selecting the to-be-trash mail folder in the past, I can vaguely recall that (a) in the server settings dialog, the folder icon changed from yellow to a different colour when the trash folder was selected and (b) the nominated mail folder appeared in a different colour in the folder list on the left of the UI. Neither of these things happen when I select the to-be-trash mail folder when this problem occurs.

My mistake there is no option of selecting local folders / trash.

I can get the same result (yellow folder) IF I select Just mark it as deleted but when I re-select Move it to this folder: Trash in .... it changes into a blue trashcan.

Just try and change temporary.

Check that you don't have a different name on server (like bin) and your trash isn't an ordinary folder.

Hello

I tried temporarily changing the setting to 'mark as deleted'. I close TB and re-opened it. Chedk that the setting was still there - it was. Deleted an e-mail - it was marked as deleted.

Then changed setting back to 'move to Trash folder' - selected folder showed as yellow icon in UI. Closed TB. Re-started TB. Check that setting was still there (ie move to Trash folder). It was. Deleted an e-mail - it disappeared and did not move to the Trash mail folder.

"Check that you don't have a different name on server (like bin)" I did, it isn't.

"and your trash isn't an ordinary folder". Well, there is an .msf file for it.

I deleted the Trash mail folder from within TB. Restarted TB. Now, of course, I cannot select 'Move deleted mails to Trash' as there is no longer any Trash mail folder.

No, TB is not automatically creating a Trash mail folder - which I think it is supposed to do for IMAP.

MGW I changed the setting back to 'mark deleted'. I close TB. I restart TB. Check setting still there - it is. I deleted the Trash mai

I have just found this:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2701373

which I now see is exactly the problem that I have...

So my mail account looks like:

XXX Mail Account

 Inbox
 Drafts
 Templates
 Sent
 Archives
 INBOX
   Deleted
 Trash

and deleted e-mails are now going into Inbox / INBOX / Deleted despite the fact that looking in the Server Settings it still does not list a mail folder for the 'send deleted mails to' and if I explicitly select either:

Inbox/Trash Inbox/INBOX/Deleted

then the setting does not 'stick' - ie close the options dialog and re-open it and there is still nothing set.

I note that the solution from:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2701373

to this problem was to destroy the entire TB mail structure on disk.

Hardly a sign of a quality product... but I think I now have two choices:

- Destroy everything and re-create - Live with it 'working' but 'not working'

I suggest that this discussion ends... this is obviously one or more bugs and, like so many other things in TB, will be something that I, and perhaps others, simply live with.

MGW

I too have this problem & would like to contribute some of my observations in the hope it can be fixed a bit quicker.

Firstly, I'm running Mint Linux 17.2 Cinnamon. My version of Thunderbird is 40.0.3 and I'm running against Google Apps imap server.

I have no idea what has caused this problem...everything has been working exactly "as advertised" for many years until sometime in the past few weeks.

I have tried everything that the OP has & basically everything that has been suggested.

My observation is this.....When I launch TB, if I watch carefully, I see the trash bin icon appear next to Trash. If I quickly right click on Trash, I get the drop down dialogue which contains the option "Empty Trash" .

However, while watching the screen ( and I have done this many times ), the trash bin icon is overwritten by a folder icon and the "Empty Trash" option disappears.

In other words, it appears to me that the "good & working Trash" option is being overwritten by something completely different.

I hope that this makes sense to "whoever" and we can get this fixed.

Cheers all.

I am sorry that you also have this problem. I will look carefully as my TB starts to see if I can see the same behaviour. But my TB takes 5 minutes to start - we have many mail folders - so it may not be easy to detect.

I still have the problem... cannot set a Trash/Deleted mail folder... and when I delete an e-mai lit just disappears.

So my workaround is I have created a new mail folder that I called 'Junk' and I move e-mails into it and do not use TB's delete operation. When I want to 'really delete' an e-mail, I delete it from my Junk mail folder.

Not good - but there is nothing else that I can do - TB is broken in regards to its Trash/Deleted mail folders - at least for me it is broken.

Best wishes

@M_G_W

I've taken a slightly different approach which may not be for you given that you seem to have a lot of mail.

I've simply changed from the server option "move it to Trash" to "just mark it as deleted". I'll clean up from time to time until this gets fixed.

edit... forgot one thing. Using my method, I can do a complete clean up of all mail marked as deleted by compacting all or selected folder/s.

Cheers, TC

@TC

I tried that too. I am sure you get a lot of e-mail - for me it's 50-100 per day. So after a while having all of those 'marked as deleted' mails just gets in the way so I would have to clear them every hour or so.. and if I delete something it would immediately be deleted (and I would have to go through our mail server logs to get the e-mail back!).

My 'move to my junk' folder is working for me for now.

In effect, it's the same as having a TB 'trash' mail folder, except I have to drag-and-drop into it... which is a pain when my mail folder hierarchy is, at times, a couple of feet long (ie there is a lot to scroll through).

So I have also taken to using the Move To ->... and navigating the mail folder hierarchy click by click instead of drag-and-drop.

I also keep getting a folder called INBOX inside my 'Inbox'. That INBOX mail folder has another Trash or Deleted inside it.

It makes me think that there is a simple coding error in TB to do with "Inbox" and "INBOX". Especially if I look in the prefs.js file to see where that config file thinks that the Trash folder is.

I am pleased you have a solution that works for you!

With best wishes

M_G_W

I don't have a solution for you. Trying to recreate your inbox/INBOX/deleted. but I'm not allowed to create a subfolder to inbox. As yours is recreated make me believe that these might be on your server. Somehow the inbox has got those extra folders. Or they are maped into inbox. thus reflecting other folders. (Mail-servers OS or program) A server-admin must correct that.

Gnospen said

I don't have a solution for you.

Additional information for anyone looking into this.

Last week, I fired up a windows 7 install I have but rarely use. It "had" Tbird 17.07 on it & the problem was not there. All was as it should be with the Trash folder.....until An upgrade was available so I took it & lo-and-behold the trash folder problem is now with my win 7 install. This TB version is 38.3.0

Seems to indicate the problem really is in TB code.

Cheers, TC

Helo!

Thank you for your comment.

I think I have found the solution... and I am sure that it is a bug in the TB code.

When you set the 'deleted mail folder', the folder name is store in the attribute:

mail.server.server1.spamActionTargetFolder

in prefs.js. This is where the bug lies...

IF you choose a mail folder called - for example - Deleted in your 'Inbox' then TB write the value of this attribute as:

INBOX.Deleted

and then when TB restarts the problem that I have described occurs because the prefs.js file has the folder name INBOX (capitals) but the real folder name is 'Inbox' - mixed case.

So... to fix it, ensure that TB is shut down (ie not running) and then manually edit this attribute in the prefs.js file and - using Deleted once again in my example - edit the value of the attribute to be EITHER:

Deleted

(ie no leading INBOX.) or change it to be:

Inbox.Deleted

(ie correct the incorrect case from INBOX to Inbox).

Then restart TB.

Simple - and it works!

Now if you change the deleted mail folder again in TB, then it will once again write an incorrect value into prefs.js and so once again you will have to manually edit the prefs.js file as described above.

There are still other bugs in the code... for example TB keeps creating a sub-folder of Inbox called INBOX... but I just ignore that.

I hope that this helps other people...

... now if only the developers would fix this AND the copy-and-paste-removes-multiple-whitespace-characters bug in TB I would be a very happy bunny!

With best regards

M_G_W