282953 - When deleting all files in a folder, the FOLDERNAME.MSF and FOLDERNAME in Mail\Localfolers are there/huge

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Shaun]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I deleted all the mail in the folder DDD in Thunderbird.  I noticed that I still
had a hard drive problem so I went to: C:\Documents and Settings\SM\Application
Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\u3p5ekte.default\Mail\Local Folders and noticed that
the DDD.MSF and DDD. files where stil there and HUGE (I'd expect them to be near
0 BYTES since they were empty, not 600,000,000+ bytes).

I suspect that even though Thunderbird shows the folder as being empty, it does
not empty the folder file's contentce in the Mail\Local Folders\ file.  When I
delete files I'd like for them to be deleted, not just appear to be deleted.

Thanks for your help and great work!

Shaun

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Create a folder
2.Put mail in it
3.Delete the mail (Shift-D to perminantly delete them, not send them to the
recycle bin)
4.Notice that the hard drive space didn't go down, the files only appear to be
deleted they are still taking up room in the Mail\Local Folders\ Directry/files.


Actual Results:  
I notice that the files are still taking up room (600,000,000+ BYTES) even
though there are no files in the folder.

Expected Results:  
When I delete all my mail, or all the mail in the folder, I expect the files to
actually delete (not have Thunderbird just not show them) so I can make room on
my hard drive.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

You must compact the folders if the mails should be removed from the files.
That`s by design

Comment 2

[Kevin Boyd]

(In reply to comment #1)
> You must compact the folders if the mails should be removed from the files.
> That`s by design
> 

Is there any way to automate that, so that folders are compacted on exit? I ask
because I adminster a thin client server with 30+ users - one user was having an
issue where they had an 800 megabyte trash folder, but zero actual messages were
being displayed. We instituted a script tweak that (intentionally) started
deleting the .MSF files overnight, but guess what - that resulted in some people
magically getting six months worth of email when they started Thunderbird in the
morning.

This "by design" behaviour seems rather silly. An option to circumvent it would
be nice. I know that Outlook Express does the exact same thing, but ... well ...
why should y'all copy THEM?