[PLUG] Thunderbird Profile size

[Dick Steffens]

On 09/20/2017 01:43 PM, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
> I am not sure what is too big - I recently migrated friend's laptop with
> 13GB of emails in it and there were no issues.
>
> I guess it all depends how the email is organized. One heap of 13GB of
> emails maybe too big, but reasonably organized directory structure breaks
> it to manageable chunks for Thunderbird.
>
> If you look into the directory, it is all text files and directories. I
> imagine TB only loads what it needs - typically a directory.

The Mail directory has more directories in it, all recognizable as 
related to my email accounts.

The one that serves my main account has folders with .sbd, files with no 
extensions, files with .msf, and a file with .dat. The directories are 
named according to the names of folders in Local Folders. Inside those 
are more .sbd directories and files with no extensions and files with 
.msf. The files with no extension are text files that look like a 
collection of the emails. The .msf files look like XML files.

> You could experiment - backup your mail and the copy & paste your emails
> until it starts slowing down or failing. Then you know the limits on your
> system.

Knowing that a collection many times larger than mine works is good 
enough for me for now. But I still should dedicate some time to cleaning 
out very old emails. This profile has followed me from at least my first 
Linux machine, which was back when the Plug clinic met at the old 
Riverdale school, the one before they moved.

If there is a way to export the collection to a more or less matching 
set of directories, sub directories, and text files, I could do that and 
still have everything if I ever found the need for it. I'd only keep 
more or less current emails (maybe a year?) inside TB.

Thanks for your reply.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens