but not so frequently as you, but in any case I decided to look into it and I found Mozilla's own web article about Compacting in Thunderbird here;
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_Tips_:_Compacting_Folders
You will see from the very first paragraph that compacting is all about deleted emails. When we delete emails they don't really get removed. Instead they are hidden. This is where compacting comes in as this actually deletes all those hidden deleted emails.
So if we are deleting a lot of emails in each session, compacting is necessary to keep the folders free from those. The article shows how to change various settings for compacting.
Don't worry about the references to TB version 5. This applies to all newer versions as well.
I hope that helps.
Mark
I am using Mozilla Thunderbird for my emails ver 13.0.1 and Windows XP SP3.
Thunderbird keeps asking me to compact files, maybe 3 - 5 times a day. I do compact most times, but I have just compacted, and downloaded 20 emails and it has asked me to compact again.
Surely that cannot be right?
Is there a way I can find out which directory is causing the problem, or a way of allocating more space?
Thanks
Colin

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