Time limit for synced local offline emails for IMAP account

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thoste
Posts: 317
Joined: June 7th, 2003, 12:45 am

Time limit for synced local offline emails for IMAP account

Post by thoste »

I have an IMAP account for which I enabled in Account Settings the checkbox
"Keep messages for this account on this computer"

That means for ALL new messages which arrive at the remote mail server they are retrieved to local Thundbird as a copy.

Just below the mentioned checkbox another options is shown to "save disk space".
When I tick "Synchronize all most recent 30 days" does that mean:
- keep all local messages copies for 30 days
or does that mean
- keep all messages for 30 days?

In other words: Assume I download a remote messages (by double clicking on it in the message list) which was from year 2016:
Is this local copy kept for 30 days too or is this local copy immediately deleted since it is older as 30 days from today?

At the bottom of the Synchronization & Storage dialog another option is listed about how long to keep messages.
If I tick "Delete messages more than 30 days" are then message deleted from local AND remote account or only form local system?

Assume a message is older than the time limit I specfied: the local message storage needs a "compact" run to be really deleted from local hard disk.

Correct?

Peter
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tanstaafl
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Posts: 49647
Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Time limit for synced local offline emails for IMAP acco

Post by tanstaafl »

If you set it to 30 days it should not keep messages from 2016. I don't know for sure whether or not "only keep messages for 30 days" effects both the remote and the local/offline folder. However, the text states it effects both and I suspect they did it that way for simplicity.

Compacting doesn't directly effect offline folders (what synchronization & storage creates to store a local copy). It will tell the IMAP server to physically remove deleted messages in the remote folder and when Thunderbird discovers that a message no longer exists in the remote folder, Thunderbird will sync the offline folder accordingly. It doesn't care who removed the messages, the same thing occurs if webmail physically removed them.

You can tweak what folders it will create a local copy for using the advanced button. If hard disk space is a issue see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Minimize_the_ ... _a_profile . Offline folders aren't a reliable backup, and don't improve performance (they're not a cache). Their main use is to read a message while working offline, They're also useful to avoid global search/indexing having to download messages itself in order to build a search index.
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