Right now, my sent folder is just over 1GB in size and I've started pruning it once it hit the 1GB mark.Īnother point is when you delete mail, the space that mail occupied in whatever folder it was in does NOT get freed, so your mail folders continually grow in size. In any event, the main reason I recommending periodic compacting of e-mail folders is to keep the 'manageable' by your e-mail software such that it's transferable to other computers, if necessary, and to prevent problems accessing your mail if the mail folders get too large. I'm using an external utility to compact the inbox which is insanely huge. With Windows Live Mail, I've encountered another problem where I can't compact the inbox because the compact process fails. I've experienced this personally with Thunderbird (I *still* can't recover the e-mail in the inbox file I have) and with Outlook Express. Once your inbox gets larger than 2GB, e-mail applications tend to have problems. This will allow you to see how large your folders are getting and you can use this to determine if/when a compact is needed.ĢGB appears to be the 'magic number' when it comes to mail folders, especially the inbox. I also recommend installing the ' Extra Folder Columns' Thunderbird extension. If you have plenty of disk space, I agree it doesn't need to be done with much frequency but it should be done. The reason you want to periodically compact e-mail folders is to keep them of a 'manageable' size.

Thunderbird freezes in windows 10