How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

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Ken Herrick
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Joined: March 11th, 2005, 4:45 pm
Location: Oakland, CA USA

How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by Ken Herrick »

Greetings-

Because of having had to change Profiles several times, from computer to computer, I've ended up with 2 problems--now, working on just one computer:

1. I have 3 Unsent folders and cannot delete the superfluous ones within Thunderbird. I currently have 6 "Unsent Messages" files on my HD, 3 of them with no extension and 2 with the msf extension. Three of those are under \Application Data\Thunderbird and two are under \Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird. All have size of 0-3 KB or so except one non-msf file with size ~7500 KB, which is under \Application Data\Thunderbird. But I currently have no unsent messages. I suspect that I should delete some of those files.

1. Which of the files should I delete, to retain only the one Unsent folder?

1.2 And what's with that 7500 KB, when I have no unsent msgs??

2. I'd also ended up with duplicates of other folders that I'd created, under Local Folders. Not being sure that the file-contents were identical in the duplicates, I moved all the files in those duplicates to just single folders and then got rid of the empty duplicate folders. But now...I have, of course, many duplicated files in the remaining folders.

2.1 How can I get rid of those file-duplicates short of the laborious process of doing it one-by-one? I do hope someone can offer a solution for that!

Ken Herrick
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DanRaisch
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Re: How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by DanRaisch »

1. If you currently have no unsent messages you can delete all six files titled Unsent. If you later save a message to be sent later (menu path File->Send Later) Thunderbird will create a new folder for the purpose.

1.2. See this article to understand that apparent discrepancy -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_: ... ng_Folders

2.1. To what duplicates are you referring when you use the term "files"? Do you mean messages in Thunderbird?
Ken Herrick
Posts: 37
Joined: March 11th, 2005, 4:45 pm
Location: Oakland, CA USA

Re: How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by Ken Herrick »

Thanks for the info.

Re 2.1: Yes; the several duplicated folders appeared to contain many identical messages. This was due, apparently, to a) my primary computer having failed and b) my then having copied the Profile from that computer's backup removable HD to the HD of my alternate computer so that I could continue with Thunderbird on the alternate computer while the first one got fixed. Then, I backed up the Profile again, from the alternate computer, onto the same removable HD and used that to replace the--now old--Profile in my repaired computer. [But the "repair" consisted ultimately in my discovering that the "on" button had stuck, fixable with just a jiggle. Bummer!]

How exactly I came to have the duplicates I haven't fully understood--but they're there. It's not a big deal, however; I now look a little closer and see that there seem to be only a dozen or so, so I can do it one at a time unless there's a quick way--or I can forget about it. Sorry for the trouble!

But there's another problem... Having read the link you provided, I now understand about nstmp folders. Turns out I now have 3 of them and it would seem that I can't tell what original folders their msgs came from except by looking at the msgs--is that right?. Or would I be correct in concluding that all msgs in a given nstmp folder came from the same other folder? That would make it easier.

Finally, I wonder if Thunderbird might be configurable so that incoming msgs were automatically blocked during any compacting procedure. That would seem to cure the nstmp problem. Can do?

KCH
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DanRaisch
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Re: How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by DanRaisch »

1. This extension can be used to clear duplicate messages but for a dozen or so it may be overkill -- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4654

2. All messages in a given nstmp file should be from just one folder.

3. No, that is not possible. Thus the recommendation to manually take Thunderbird off-line before compacting. In most cases, though, there is no problem with compacting while on-line. If done frequently, the compacting process takes just seconds.
Ken Herrick
Posts: 37
Joined: March 11th, 2005, 4:45 pm
Location: Oakland, CA USA

Re: How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by Ken Herrick »

OK, thanks again for the info. I've downloaded & installed the "Remove Dupes" add-on, & tried it. Seems to work just fine.

Too bad about the automatic off-line idea...

KCH
Ken Herrick
Posts: 37
Joined: March 11th, 2005, 4:45 pm
Location: Oakland, CA USA

Re: How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by Ken Herrick »

A p.s. while I have your attention:

1. Apparently Remove Dupes does not work on the Sent folder. I wish it would since one of the nstmp folders came from Sent. I get the warning, "Skipping the the special folder Sent while searching for duplicates" while down below at the same time I read "Searching for duplicate messages...". But where is it still searching? When I click on the OK button, I get, again down below, "Duplicate message search aborted". I wanted to move those msgs to Sent, then remove the dupes from there. No can do.

2. The links to https://removedupes.mozdev.org/, at the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4654 link that you give me above, don't work. I wanted to ask the developer about this issue but can't. Could you pass this along to him/her?

Ken Herrick
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DanRaisch
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Re: How to delete superfluous Unsent folders & duplicate files?

Post by DanRaisch »

1. You could move messages from Sent to a user created folder, remove any duplicates using the extension and then move the cleaned up set of messages back to Sent.

2. Extensions are created by independent developers and I don't have any access to them other than that link.
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