Best way to remove imap account from thunderbird?

[ronalessi]

Hi,

I have about 7 email accounts (imap) connected to gmail in thunderbird. When I remove the account via Account Settings-Remove account, the email account gets removed from the thunderbird interface. However, the emails are still taking up space in my hardrive?

How do I take those emails off my hard drive? My fear is that if I delete the folders for that imap account on my computer, then it will start deleting all the emails in my actual gmail account. Please help!

[tanstaafl]

Write down the "local directory" setting (bottom of the accounts server settings by a Browse button). That is where it stores the accounts files. Select the account and delete it using tools -> account settings -> account actions -> remove account. Exit Thunderbird and delete the contents of that directory. Its safe to delete the files once the account is gone because it no longer knows the mailbox even exists anymore once you delete the account.

If you want to keep the accounts but get rid of the downloaded files uncheck "keep messages for this account on computer" in the accounts synchronization & storage settings and exit Thunderbird before deleting the files in the local directory. The only file you might want to keep is the one for the message filters -"msgFilterRules.dat". Unchecking that setting tells Thunderbird not to sync the folders anymore, and it will ignore any existing mbox files. It will also ignore the fact they're gone. Mbox files are used to store the downloaded copy of the messages.

I suggest you browse http://kb.mozillazine.org/Minimize_the_ ... _a_profile

[ronalessi]

Thank you. Very helpful info.