What is Thunderbird doing ?

[pete of ebor]

I've been using Thunderbird for many years, but one thing that does intrugue (..and occasionally annoy..) me is what it is doing. I have 6 mail accounts, five imap and one pop - though three of these are virtually dormant, two are lightly used and one is heavily used (gmail imap). Sometimes, after downloading all available mail, the 'throbber' continues spinning as though TB is still working, even though there is no more mail to download. What could it be doing ? No message appears on the right of the add-on bar... a mesage usually appears while it is downloading or compacting. What could it be doing ?

[DanRaisch]

It could be updating local copies of the IMAP folders if you have Thunderbird set to store copies of messages on the local system for off-line access. (Tools->Account Settings->Synchronization & Storage)
It could be updating the Global Search index, if you have Thunderbird set to "Enable Global Search & Indexing." (Tools->Options->Advanced->General tab)

[pete of ebor]

Whilst I do have TB set to store local copies, I would have thought that once those emails had been downloaded once, then they wouldn't need to be 'updated'...
Equally, I have always tried to remember to disable the global indexer... Having just checked, I found that it wasn't disabled - it is now ! Fingers crossed !

[DanRaisch]

The .msf files seem to update each time the folders are accessed so even if Thunderbird is finished downloading from the server there may be some hard drive activity until that index is up to date.

[soyqueen01]

Whatever it's doing, there should be some way to find out, right? Why should we have to guess...?

[LIMPET235]

Why are you replying to a thread that died in 2015?

Locking due to old age...