Screen shot please?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem

Hopefull a screen shot is attached.

Regards

Chris

I don't understand why it's in grey italics. That makes it look "special", like the mandatory googlemail folders.

Are you using slashes in any folder names? Thunderbird has been known to parse a slash as a directory/subdirectory demarcation.

To be safe, choose names for folders in TB just as you would in a regular file system; avoid using slashes, asterisks, query marks. Leading dots in pathnames have special significance in Linux (and maybe OSX) and given that TB can run on all three of these platforms, it may be aware of such nuances.

And I'd avoid spaces, too. ;-)

Hi Zenos,

Thanks for your reply. I think you might be onto something because I did use slashes because I just copied the header of an email to use as the folder name, I thought you could use anything. I will take your advice and just use ordinary letters and numbers in future. The problem I have now is deleting these folders, do you have any ideas about that?

Regards

Chris

I'd open the profile via Help|Troubleshooting Information, close Thunderbird, and then look for the offending files/folders and delete them in your file manager. There may be .sbd files in particular representing the folders you have inadvertently created. Working folders in Thunderbird are files in your file system, and have no extension. Each will have a companion file with a .msf extension. You can delete the extensionless files, their partner msf files and the appropriate sbd files.

Hi Zenos,

After much effort, the deleted files kept coming back after I thought I had deleted them all, so in the end I put the data in temporary folders and then deleted the top folder.

Thanks for all your help it is much appreciated, I could not have sorted it out without you.

Regard Chris

Hi Zenos

I wrote too soon the folders have reappeared and worse than that the emails that I moved around have disappeared!

Luckily Thunderbird seems to save copies all over the place and they are still in the "Important Folder".

Perhaps Thunderbird is too clever for it's own good and this is why I can't delete these folders . Do you think they are saved somewhere I haven't managed to locate?

There doesn't seem to much logic in how all this works, I don't suppose there is an idiot's guide to it?

Regards

Chris

Hi Zenos,

This gets stranger and stranger!

I noticed that the greyed out folders were back and I was just showing my wife the problem and told her I couldn't delete the greyed out file and went into delete and managed to delete the folder!

I then went back into the profile and when I went into the folders that were not showing any emails those files were saying there was data in them!

I then closed Thunderbird to see if the deleted folders came back when I restarted it but they haven't yet.

I think I must be having a senior moment all the above applies to files and folders that were in the folder called Bin (is that the same as Trash or the recycle Bin?). I don't understand how the folders I deleted in IE came to be back in Bin on Thunderbird.

Do you understand what is happening here?

You just mentioned "Important". So, is this gmail?

What happens if you go to gmail's website, log in to your account and sort it out there?

Gmail resists deletion; it prefers to hide rather than deleting, giving you the option to restore deleted messages. So it comes as no surprise that stuff you delete reappears in the Bin/Trash/Deleted folder.

It is a sort of gmail account. It is Virginmedia email which is run by gmail. I have given up on Google things apart from the basic search. They have made things so complicated I have no idea what is happening and you can never contact anyone to sort it out and I have found their forums useless. I used most of the products they have bought before hand and I ended up with about 6 google accounts. I managed to get it down to about 3 but now I avoid it if at all possible. I don't think virginmedia really know how the system works. I have 2 email adresses I use and eventually I got the first one to work ok on Thunderbird nut I had a lot of trouble getting the other to work and then suddenly it appeared on Thunderbird, I still have no idea how it happened but it works in a completely different way to the first address.