SillyDog701

[Cesar]

I notice that my mail file in Mozilla is almost 500MB in size.

This is ridiculuous since I have almost nothing in my Mail folder. So I cleared out my Junk Folder, my Trash Folder, my Sent Folder, and my Inbox Folder.

After cleaning out all these folders, the mail folder was the same size.

So I went into Profiles and cliked undre the profile and then under the Mail folder and found the following results.
Drafts 0 KB
Drafts.msf 2 KB
Inbox 341,124 KB
Inbox.msf 63 KB
Junk 72,288 KB
Junk.msf 6 KB
Sent 21,163 KB
Sent.msf 103 KB
Templates 0 KB
Templates.msf 2 KB
Trash 1,898 KB
Trash.msf 16 KB
msgFilterRules.dat 1 KB
popstate.dat 1 KB

It was surprising to find the Junk Folder having a file size of 72 MB since I cleaneod out everything in the junk folder and even restarted my computer after cleaning out the file.

Furthermore, I added up all the messages in my Inbox and they only add up to 28 MB.

Can anyone offer some advice on how I can determine why the Mail Folder file is so big, when the actual contents of file in the folder is much much smaller.

Thanks,

Cesar.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414

[Fulvio]

I do not see that you are compacting your folders (File|Compact...).
I do the following: I set up my Junk folder to empty automatically after one day. If you are patient enough, you will see all Junk mail which is over 24 hrs. old going to the Trash folder (it may take 20 min. before this happens). But if you have the size of the folder visible
(on the upper right of the left column where the account folders are listed, there a square. Click on that, and select size. You will see that the Junk folder will show a certain size, even after deleting its contents. You should empty the Trash folder, and compact all folders. You are still keeping the old stuff, including deleted mail, attached to the folder, until you compact the folders.
You, probably, never compacted the folders. I, prefer to do it manually, because it gives a chance to check the the Trash and Junk folders.
And, if you set your preferences to empty Trash on exit, you will not have anything there. Don't bother with the stuff on the hard drive. Just control everything from your Mail.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7

[Cesar]

Thank you very much.

I compacted the folders and this drastically reduced the size of the mailbox. I thought once I deleted the mail, it was deleted forever and no longer attached to the mail folder. I guess I do not understand how this works, or if my preferences are not set up correctly.

Thanks again for all your help.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414

[Fulvio]

Glad to help. The reason that the files are not as you see them is to give a chance to recover mail, in case it was removed by mistake.
You can set to compact automatically from Edit|Preferences|Mail and News|Offline and Disk Space (at the very bottom) but I do not use the feature. I prefer to exit having removed everything which I don't want, for good. But, if you are not in the habit, the setting helps.

UserAgent: Opera/8.51 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

[Ramona]

I compacted the folders and this drastically reduced the size of the mailbox. I thought once I deleted the mail, it was deleted forever and no longer attached to the mail folder. I guess I do not understand how this works, or if my preferences are not set up correctly.

Cesar, see if this article clears up your confusion on how compacting mail folders can increase your Mail & Newsgroups component's performance:

Compacting Folders

Compacting, or compressing the Mail folders, also releases valuable disk space...

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5