A strange Thunderbird popup

[himmm]

I have windows 7 and run Thunderbird 38.1.0.
I have 3 Hotmail and 1 Outlook IMAP accounts.

Recently when it checks incoming emails, particularly on one Hotmail account below popup comes up.

"Thunderbird

The current operation on "Inbox" did not succeed. The mail server for account xxxxxxx@hotmail.co.uk responded: (OVERQUOTA)The mailbox does not have enough space remaining to complete this operation."

Could someone tell me what is this all about please?
Thank you.

[DanRaisch]

It's possible that you've reached the limit on the number of messages or the amount of storage space that Hotmail permits for a given account. Have you logged on to that account using a browser to see if that might be the case?

[himmm]

Thank you for your answer DanRaisch.

I logged on to my account and deleted a lot of old emails. Unfortunately it didn't help.

I just can not work out how to check my quota....any idea how please?

[DanRaisch]

The email provider would be able to provide that information.

Do you regularly compact the message folders? Compacting is something that needs to be done regularly in any email program. We recommend weekly, but many of us do it daily. When done often enough, it can be an extremely fast process. Not doing so can lead to problems like those you are experiencing. See this about how to and why it's so important: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

If you haven't been doing that before, first back up your Thunderbird Profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup then compact all folders. If 'compacting' them (and leaving a long enough time for the process to complete) doesn't fully resolve the problem then do the following on each account:

Close Thunderbird. Find and delete all of the files with the .msf file extension in your profile folder/Mail http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Folder#Thunderbird including your Local Folders, especially if you are using the global inbox. You must have "View hidden files and folders" on http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272 and you need to set "hide extensions for known file types" off (just below View Hidden) if you are using Windows. These are your mail summary files and do not hold any messages themselves. They will be rebuilt the next time you open each folder in Thunderbird. Compact all your folders when you have completed this.

If the problem persists after that, close Thunderbird and navigate to the profile folder. In the directory C:\Users\WINUSERID\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\RANDOM08.default\ImapMail look into the sub-directory imap.live.com. You may find three such sub-directories with similar names(one for each of those accounts) so you may need to look into all three. Locate the files named Inbox (with no file name extension) in each such sub-directory. What are the sizes of those files?

Note that "RANDOM08" refers to a profile name consisting of 8 random characters, created when Thunderbird was installed and the profile created.

[mgagnonlv]

I am aware of places where the quota is assessed only once a day. So if you had too much mail and just deleted some, the error message might disappear only tomorrow.

[himmm]

Thank you for your answers DanRaisch and mgagnonlv.

The minute I find time I shall go through with DanRaisch's instructions......and give you a shout.

Just one quick question...I also have Nexus 5 android phone and Nexus 7 tablet. Both of them using MailDroid app to fetch my emails from, as I said above, 3 Hotmails and 1 outlook.com accont. Troubled xxxxxxx@hotmail.co.uk account not working on these devices either......So that makes me think that this problem may not be Thunderbirds fault?????

[DanRaisch]

If you are seeing the same/similar error message from the Android devices it does suggest that the problem is with the Hotmail account itself.

[himmm]

Yes, you are correct DanRaisch. I managed to have a chat support by Microsoft. Apparently they are in the process of migrating Hotmail accounts to "Outlook". it is taking time. She wasn't able to tell me when it would return to normal but assured me that it would be soon ??????? I hope so.......I am sorry to take your time. Thank you.