RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

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FrankSMS
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Joined: February 9th, 2017, 4:03 pm

RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

You can create a folder under Blogs and News Feeds but it seems impossible to delete it. Normally, in any program, to add something you right click a folder and click ADD. To delete something you right click it and click DELETE.
Last edited by FrankSMS on May 27th, 2018, 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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WaltS48
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by WaltS48 »

I don't think I can be of much help if the feed subscription isn't in the Blogs & News Feeds account.

To remove a folder there, the user first has to select the account, click Manage subscriptions, find the feed you want to delete, click it so the feed URL shows, click Remove, then Close. Go back to the Folder Pane, right click and delete the folder.

Maybe you could try dragging and dropping the offending feed folder into the Blogs & News Feeds account., or try and find it in your profile folder and delete it from there after making a backup of the profile.
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FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

Yes I tried that under Manage Subscriptions but Remove is grayed out for some reason. Can't drag it anywhere. Actually the item I am attempting to delete isn't a feed, its a folder. I can move things in and out of it but can't seem to delete the folder itself. Looked on the Menu Bar but didn't see anything there that would do it. Odd how they could provide the option of creating a folder without the option of deleting that folder. I must be missing something here. Probably staring me right in the face!
FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

I've updated and shortened my opening post/rant. I mistakenly mentioned feeds and it should have just applied to folders. Feeds I can add and delete fine. Also for those of you who want to control how often each individual feed is updating you can do that in in the folder of the feed but not individual feed. So to have that control you would need to put that feed in its own folder. I think....please correct me if I'm wrong.

So do any of you experts in RSS that have been using it for a long time use Thunderbird or Firefox as your RSS reader or do you use a standalone program made for just that task? RSS is a little different than email so maybe it makes sense to have a stand alone program. Rarely does any program that does other things ever better stand alone products. I mean, what can you expect when something is "tossed in"? Opera had an excellent RSS reader but as I'm not very experienced in a variety of RSS readers I don't know how it would compare to modern versions. Good control over the layout would be important, update control....anything else people tend to value?
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WaltS48
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by WaltS48 »

Okay so you selected Blogs & News Feeds then used the context menu item "New Folder..." to create a new folder in he account.

I just tested this 3 times and had no problem deleting the folder(s) by selecting the folder and using Delete from the right-click context menu. Using Delete from the Mail Toolbar also works. Delete Folder from the Menu Bar > File menu item also works.

I was also able to delete other folders with feed subscriptions in that account using the methods above.

Try Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled and see if you can delete the folder.

If none of those work for you, try deleting them from Mail > Feeds in your profile folder. Make a backup first.

I'm off to restore my profile backup. :)
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FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

Thank you for your help WaltS48.
I'm using version 52.0.8.
I can right click a Feed and see Delete as an option. But not a folder. When I right click a folder I see:
Get Messages
Open in New Tab
Open in New Windows
Search Messages
Subscribe
New Folder
Settings

That's it. I couldn't see any way of deleting a folder by any of those options.
However there is good news. The geniuses at Mozilla elected to bury this option somewhere else. You have to go into Account Settings and while the folder is highlighted click Account Actions at the bottom. Then Remove Account. I guess the concept of organization isn't grasped by most software designers. It truly boggles the mind. Right click--Add. Right click--Delete. That is logical. That is conventional. Mozilla: Wake up!

I should clarify something here though. When I do this its treating this as an account. I don't remember setting it up as an account. But maybe I did. The weird thing is that when you right click Blogs and News Feeds there is not option for a new account. It doesn't matter though. If its a feed, account or folder they all should have the right click/delete option. And what is an account anyway? You have feeds which you want to group into folder. Like every other file system on computers. Account? Why would they opt for this label? Basically with computers you have files and those are in groups and sub-groups. That's it. Account means somebody else is using it. Ugh....

Does anybody know why Disk Space shows up under the account name? Shouldn't this be in a right click drop down menu? Of course it should. They're just clogging up space here.

It gets worse. When you highlight a feed and hit Delete it asks you if you want to delete that folder. But it isn't a folder. Its a feed.

This is like being in a restaurant and asking for fresh tomatoes and they squirt ketchup into a bowl for you. Good enough, right?

Does anybody with the slightest degree of discernment ever use Thunderbird as a RSS reader or was RSS just thrown in as an afterthought? I suspect this but there are a lot of features they've included which also makes it look like they're serious about RSS and its usefulness. And why would they do this when you can read RSS in Firefox? And get RSS extensions? What are experienced RSS enthusiasts using?
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WaltS48
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by WaltS48 »

I have 16 subscriptions in my Blogs & News Feeds account, 3 email accounts, 2 newsgroup accounts with a total of 24 newsgroups and one chat account. I can't delete any of the accounts using the 3 methods I mentioned in my previous reply to delete a feed folder.

I see you were able to remove the folder you were talking about. Sounds like what you were calling a folder was an actual account.

So for clarity, anything in bold in the Folder Pane is an account. Unless that account has unread messages, then whatever folder those are located in under that account will also be bold.

If I select any feed under my Blogs & News Feeds account and right click I have:

Get Messages
Open in New Tab
Open in New Window
Search Messages...
Subscribe...
New Subfolder...
Delete
Rename
Compact
Mark Folder Read
Favorite Folder
Properties

The Blogs & News Feeds account has the same context menu that you describe.
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FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

> I see you were able to remove the folder you were talking about. Sounds like what you were calling a folder was an actual account.

Exactly. Should I update the original post to reflect that?
I should mention I have no problem with email accounts. They tend to be quite predictable in terms of creation and deletion.

> So for clarity, anything in bold in the Folder Pane is an account.

Not exactly! Each feed I added is in bold and there are no messages in either.

Glad to see this has been resolved. :)
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WaltS48
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by WaltS48 »

No need to update the original post. You can change the Topic and mark it as, [Solved] RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

So each feed you added is a separate account in the Folder Pane?

How are you adding separate feeds without creating an account? I can create more than one account, but the feeds go into the first account.

Then I have to drag and drop the feed to the other account.

I need to see a screenshot of what you have.

Here is my test screen using TB 52.8.0 with a test profile. Mozilla-beta and Comm-beta are both feed accounts. As you can see the feeds themselves are not bold because I marked them as read.

Image

EDIT: This is my production profiles setup. Notice the account name is Blogs & News Feeds and is bold. The feeds are all read and are not bold.

Image
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terrathunderbird
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by terrathunderbird »

I had trouble with this when I was trying to delete all my Compuserve folders. I had to remove all the emails, by moving them to local folders. THEN I had to make sure all the synching folders I wanted to delete weren't synching with the online folders at the same time I was trying to delete them. I believe I did this under "file" and then "offline" and then "offline settings". I unclicked the folders that I wanted to delete. Then I right clicked on the folder in TB and chose "delete". It didn't work if I deleted the folder in webmail first, unless I waited a while. At first, TB would give me an error message saying that it couldn't complete the command.

Anyway, it's done. Like 10 folders are gone. Not sure if that helped, or not. I realize you're asking about RSS Feeds, and I'm talking about email. My point is that if they are constantly synching, they may not recognize the delete folder command.
FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

Interesting how working offline works best which does make sense. The last thing you want is for the program to be updating while you're trying to work with it! Yet its something many users might easily overlook. And this same principle applies to so many other programs as well. The last thing you want when changing things is for the program to be quietly doing stuff in the background unbeknownst to you. Probably disabling your internet connection is the one surefire way of ensuring this can't happen. Then again you don't want the program to even attempt changes so its important to set it to offline if possible which in Thunderbird is File | Offline | Work Offline.
FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

terrathunderbird wrote:I had trouble with this when I was trying to delete all my Compuserve folders. I had to remove all the emails, by moving them to local folders. THEN I had to make sure all the synching folders I wanted to delete weren't synching with the online folders at the same time I was trying to delete them. I believe I did this under "file" and then "offline" and then "offline settings". I unclicked the folders that I wanted to delete. Then I right clicked on the folder in TB and chose "delete". It didn't work if I deleted the folder in webmail first, unless I waited a while. At first, TB would give me an error message saying that it couldn't complete the command.

Anyway, it's done. Like 10 folders are gone. Not sure if that helped, or not. I realize you're asking about RSS Feeds, and I'm talking about email. My point is that if they are constantly synching, they may not recognize the delete folder command.
Were those Compuserve folders RSS or just email?
terrathunderbird
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by terrathunderbird »

They were just email. My point is that if you have folders or any settings in the RSS feed that may be contradicting your "delete folder" instruction, maybe there's something you can do on the RSS feed side that would help. Or else go off-line and then delete.
FrankSMS
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by FrankSMS »

I really like the idea of taking everything offline when doing any "structural changes". I never even though of that before. Here I am trying to make changes and the program is working away in the background doing stuff. What was I thinking? :)

I just wish Thunderbird would label an email account in the Profile folder with the same email name as in my accounts. When you're looking for a particular account its very time consuming opening up every one to see which is which.
terrathunderbird
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Re: RSS Feeds: It seems impossible to delete a folder.

Post by terrathunderbird »

I think one of the others on this forum asked me a question that triggered the same light bulb... yes, duh, why do the emails keep coming back? well, cuz I set it up to synch, and that's what it's doing! It took me days to figure that out, by the way.

Yeah. Profile folders. Another universe. I copy the files over into a folder with the correct name. Then at least I have a backup that I can recognize.

By the way, you made me think that you're opening up the profile folder unnecessarily. Are you talking about the FOLDERS? In other words, here's a picture I posted a couple days ago while I was sorting out things:

http://imgbox.com/NI748qaW

Note that I've got one email account called "OLD compuserve.com". That's just one of like 7 or 8 email accounts I have. I "whited" them out, because I don't want people to know my email addresses (they recommend that in this forum). Anyway, when setting up TB, each email address I use is a different "account". You can add them easily. And modify the "name". Each of the accounts ends up a separate folder in the profile.

Not sure if that helps. DO NOT RENAME A FOLDER in the profile. I've been warned against that practice, although I think that TB just regenerates what it needs, the profile can get cumbersome. I still don't have an answer as to why I have so many folders in my profile. It might be that I changed the folder structure, and so it creates a new profile folder. I don't know. But my TB is working, I'm happy, so I don't question it anymore...
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