Delete Thunderbid Junk Folder

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#1

I use Thunderbid and have been annoyed by an empty Junk folder that was impossible to delete. I'm sharing here a method that worked for me, and the Junk folder's gone. There's also a zombie Outbox folder, but so far no way to get rid of that one. I keep lots of email sorted into folders and sub-folders on a small laptop, so even that one extra line gained by deleting Junk is quite welcome.

This probably only works if the Junk folder's empty, and presumably also not used going forward. The solution that worked for me has several parts.

  1. First off, I don't use Junk but instead have all "Junk" emails go to the Trash folder that's already used for deleting emails I don't want to save. In other words, my Junk folder was always empty (if yours isn't, this probably won't work). I set Junk to go in Trash for several of my email accounts when setting them up, not realizing there were two accounts that didn't get set for some reason.

  2. When I couldn't delete the Junk folder, I looked for it in Thunderbird's Edit -> Settings -> Config Editor...

In the Search box at the top I typed in the word folder (junk didn't work, nor did folders). That gave me a couple of pages to scroll through. Near the bottom I found several mail.server... folder names that ended with the word Junk. Several others in that group ended with Trash.

  1. On a hunch, I renamed those ending with Junk so they end with Trash. To do that, I click on the Pencil icon a the right end of a line, or just double click on the directory string to the left of the Pencil icon. Then change the word Junk at the end of the directory name string to Trash and hit Enter or click the Checkmark.

So a line like :
mail.server.server1.spamActionTargetFolder mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Junk

becomes:
mail.server.server1.spamActionTargetFolder mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Trash

  1. I then tried to delete the Junk folder again and still couldn't. But after quit/restart Thunderbird I could drag it to the Trash folder and then Empty Trash. Another quit/restart didn't make it re-appear, so hopefully that folder's gone for good.

My theory is that the Junk folder only appears if it's used for something. So if it shows up again, I'll look for something causing it to be used, get rid of that, and do this fix again. If you find this works, find something else, or have a way to get rid of Outbox, please share.

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