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Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client - Part 2: Corrupted Inbox

February 13, 2008

Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client - Part 2: Corrupted Inbox In a post I made back in July 2007, I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird for my email client. I'm still 100% happy with that decision.

However, over the past few days I've experienced a lot of problems with Thunderbird. Yesterday it was so bad that it basically just trashed the hard drive all day and was unusable. I did some searches on the Thunderbird support site and came to the conclusion that my inbox was corrupted. I tried deleting the index file for my inbox and then restarting Thunderbird. This is supposed to rebuild the indexes, which it did, but it did not help my problem. I tried several more things and then left it re-indexing again overnight. It was still churning away this morning and still so slow it was unusable.

I searched through more FAQs and articles and put together this sequence to fix the problem.

Unplug my Laptop from the Internet. Start Thunderbird.
As soon as Thunderbird starts, tell it to work offline by selecting File | Offline.
Right-Click on my Inbox and select Compact.
After compacting was successful, switch back to online mode by selecting File | Offline and unselecting offline.

This fixed the problem.

Why did this happen and what did the fix do?
Because most people, including me, get a ton of email in their inbox and then either delete it or move it to other folders, the inbox can become corrupted. This deletion and moving creates hundreds, or maybe thousands, or even tens of thousands, of messages in your inbox that are marked as deleted (you can't see them anymore) but they're still in the file that makes up your inbox. It leaves holes so to speak. Compacting is the process that actually removes those messages (holes) and shrinks your inbox file down to the size of just the messages you have kept. Actually, I think it probably copies the active messages to a new inbox file and then deletes the old one when it's done.

You should either set an option to automatically compact your inbox from time to time, or manually do it once a week or so.

You should also either set the option to empty the trash when you exit or empty your trash (and compact it too) about once a week or so.

There are more complex procedures in the Thunderbird support section for corrupted folders that you can't compact. You can find that info here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders.

If an email is important you should move it to a folder besides the inbox. This is because the inbox is more vulnerable to problems. This is true in most any email client application, not just Thunderbird.

Until Next Time,
Fred

About the Author

Fred Black is an experienced online business operator, programmer, web site developer, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business Blog at: http://www.pqInternet.com.

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Posted by Fred on February 13, 2008 | Printer-Friendly

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Comments:

From: Gary

I have not had Thunderbird work well with gmail, even though it is build in supposedly. Until it works better, I'll just use a browser.
Posted by Gary on February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
From: Mohamed Bhimji

Hi Fred,

Great post - I use Outlook at work for my e-mail and have several e-mail boxes that are at the 2gb size -- apparently the limit for Outlook.

I use Thunderbird at home and filter my e-mails into specific boxes rather than keep them in one e-mail box.

My "trash" folder has just over 3,000 messages (I don't delete anything) and am curious to know how big your inbox was before it became corrupted.

This is also a great tip, as I will now ensure that I compact my boxes and do some housekeeping to ensure that all the other boxes do not get corrupted.

Regards,

Mohamed
Posted by Mohamed Bhimji on February 19, 2008 4:13 PM
From Fred...

Hello Mohamed;
Thanks for stopping by. My inbox file was around 1.7GB before I compacted it... after that it was around 700MB.

Fred
Posted by Fred Black on February 19, 2008 7:42 PM
From: Frank Haywood

Hi Fred,

I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about email at the moment, but that's another story.

I have the answer to all future email problems that you've described.

Use IMAP instead of POP3. I've been using IMAP for about 4 years, now along with my developers who also swear by it.

IMAP leaves all your email on the server, and allows you to connect via multiple PCs to retrieve it. It allows you to share an email account with support staff and other employees.

For instance if you flag a message, everyone that has access to that email account sees the flag. If someone replies, then when the accounts synchronise at next connection, then everyone sees the reply.

There are lots of other little uses for it too.

But back to your problem.

Because all your email is held on the server and you download a local copy to your PC when you connect, it means that if your PC ever goes belly up completely, you haven't lost any email.

So in your case, what I would have done is deleted the email account on my PC, and then re-created it again which takes a few moments with Outlook Express's account import/export ability.

Step by step:

1) Export the account settings including passwords etc if you've not already done it.
2) Delete the email account on your PC. All the local files disappear.
3) Import the account settings you saved in one.
4) Connect to the mailbox.

That's it! All your email will then download. It can take a little while depending on what type of connection you're on, but it's well worth it to prevent all the hassle of lost email.

I have pretty much all my email going back 4 years now apart from one short period when I was juggling email across accounts and folders one day and accidentally deleted the wrong folder. D'oh!

Which reminds me. That's the other nice thing about IMAP. You can drag and drop email to different accounts / folders just as if it were a file.

So, on a shared account I have with one of my developers, if there's something I want him to see from another email account, I just drag and drop copy that email into the inbox on our shared account.

You should try it.

If you do a search on my blog, you'll find more info about it, and a link to a video I did last year showing how to set it all up.

All the best,

-Frank Haywood
Posted by Frank Haywood on February 27, 2008 4:44 AM
From: Paul Stone

Hi Fred,
A fellow musician here and our Thunderbird now has 2 inboxes and the second one is a subfolder of Drafts.
This seemed to have happened when a friend sent the same e-mails to me and my wife. Do you know how we can go back to the original inbox.
Posted by Paul Stone on March 26, 2008 2:15 PM
From Fred...

Hey Paul;
I don't know if this will fix your problem, but try looking under Tools | Account Settings, then for each account, select the "Server Setting" in the left column and then the server info will appear in the right area. There's a button labeled "Advanced"... whatever you do, don't click that button! Just kidding, click the "Advanced" button and make sure that the correct inbox is selected: the default is the "Global Inbox" and I suspect that this is what you want.

You should then drag any email in the incorrect inboxes to the global inbox.

You can also setup "Identities" but I haven't done that, so I can't really tell you how it works.

I hope this helps, it's all I really know to suggest.

Thanks for stoppign by.
Fred
Posted by Fred Black on March 26, 2008 2:28 PM
From: Sid

THANK YOU MAN
GOD BLESS YOU
You are my savior
Posted by Sid on September 30, 2008 8:42 AM
From: Gary

Nice post. Thanks Fred.
I tried Thunderbird a while back and had various problems. I have installed again today and love the very simple means of creating new accounts.
Posted by Gary on August 31, 2010 4:27 AM