Here’s how to disable nagging ‘Compact Now’ message in Thunderbird 6:
1. Click on ‘Tools>Options…’
2. Now, click on ‘Advanced>Network & Disk Space’. Now uncheck the option ‘Compact folders when it will save over ___ MB’. Click ‘OK’ when done.
How To Disable Nagging ‘Compact Now’ Message In Thunderbird 6
Praise be to jeebus!
Thank goodness for this page! I have lost some incredibly valuable emails because of compacting. I tried moving emails to folders outside the inbox, and it didn’t work – they still got compacted, and I lost tons of much needed emails. I wish there was a way to just compact the junk mail or deleted mail folders, or to put emails in a folder that would never be compacted. I also wish Thunderbird developers had come up with a better name – the word “compacted” does not at all hint that it means permanently deleting emails.
Again, thanks so much for this page!
Thanks a lot for this tip. I hadn’t upgraded because it wasn’t compatible with one of my plugins that I loved, but once I found the workaround for that I did upgrade and that sucker’s been getting on my nerve every time I got to the bottom message. It’s saving me a lot of grief now.
I guess most users don’t know what “compacting” is, found an article from 2009:
“Did you know that eMails in the Thunderbird eMail client are not terminally deleted?
Even if you empty the trash folder, they are not physically removed, neither from the trash folder, nor from the original folder. Yes, this does mean that you can recover those eMails. However, that will be the subject of another story.
The issue here is that Thunderbird will grow to an enormous size if all the spam and mails you have trashed are never actually removed. In fact, the traces are multiplied if you move mail from one folder to another and this will add to the size of each of these folders.”
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-terminally-delete-emails-in-thunderbird-by-compacting-folders/