Slow sending and receiving

[briechel]

My Thunderbird is extremely slow in sending and receiving mail. Often it reports a timeout. I have a HugnesNet satellite connection and my mail server is Gmail. Gmail says that my settings are correct. Google mail and other Internet websites usually load up fairly quickly.
Any suggestions about how to improve the speed?
Thanks,
Berni
** e-mail address removed by moderator **

[Daifne]

Moving to Thunderbird Support.

I removed your e-mail address because we do not give email support. To do so would deprive other users of the information offered in a response to your topic. More importantly, spammers harvest email addresses from public forums like this.

How recently have you compacted your folders? Compacting is something that needs to be done regularly in any email program. We recommend weekly, but many of us do it daily. When done often enough, it can be an extremely fast process. Not doing so can lead to problems like those you are experiencing. See this about how to and why it's so important: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

If you haven't been doing that before, and 'compacting' them now (and leaving a long enough time for the process to complete) doesn't fully resolve the problem then do the following on each account:

Close Thunderbird. Find and delete all of the files with the .msf file extension in your profile folder/Mail http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Folder#Thunderbird including your Local Folders, especially if you are using the global inbox. You must have "View hidden files and folders" on http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272 and you need to set "hide extensions for known file types" off (just below View Hidden) if you are using Windows. These are your mail summary files and do not hold any messages themselves. They will be rebuilt the next time you open each folder in Thunderbird. Compact all your folders when you have completed this.

To avoid this happening again, see the tips in these articles:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_worki ... derbird%29
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_%28Thunderbird%29

[TheBorgInvasion]

I am having the same issue. In my case, I can barely even access folders without waiting a very long time. This just started last night all of the sudden. No idea why. I have been trying to compact all folders, but takes a very long time to get access into TB. I regularly do compact them once a month.
I am going to try those other suggestions myself and let you all know later.

[TheBorgInvasion]

Compacting worked. I actually compacted all 100 folders, including small and empty ones, and eventually found one folder that caused the problem. No idea why. Only got 1 new email last night which was only text. Hey, as long as it works again!

[Sherry C]

I compact every day.

Can you explain how you determine that one particular folder was causing your problem?

Thanks for your reply.

[TheBorgInvasion]

I did not. I just went compacting each folder until it seemed to help. It was actually one of the many least expected folders I would think of causing a problem. The folder itself was no more bigger than others. TB is still acting slow. Like the new mail indicator near the clock. Takes 5m to display itself and disappear. So something is still wrong.

[Daifne]

TheBorgInvasion and Sherry C,
Please start new topics. These issues can get quite involved and helping more than one person in a topic just confuses everyone. Thanks.

[Guest]

Ran into a similar problem. Eventually traced it to a setting that tells Thunderbird not to delete the messages from the mail server once they've been retrieved. It's in tools/account settings/server settings, a box labeled "[ ]Leave messages on server"

Apparently it was chocking on months worth of old emails.

[LIMPET235]

That's great guest.
Now locking this relic from 2007.