IMAP slow when deleting messages from one mailbox

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4 posts Page 1 of 1
by virtualmike » Mon May 15, 2023 3:10 pm
Hi,

I have several mailboxes that are accessed via IMAP.

With one of the mailboxes, using Thunderbird, deleting one or more messages takes a (relatively) long time: 3-5 seconds.

With the other mailboxes, when I hit the delete key, the message is deleted in less than a second.

I recognize that in IMAP, "deleting" the message only marks it for deletion on the server. Therefore, each time I finish dealing with messages in any mailbox, I "compact" the mailbox in T-bird (which I believe does an IMAP "expunge"). However, the delay in deleting occurs regardless of any compacting/expunging.

The mailbox in question isn't particularly large (or small) compared to the other mailboxes.

In my T-bird client, this mailbox is the first in the list, but I don't see why T-bird would handle it differently than any other IMAP mailbox.

What factors could cause a particular mailbox to have issues when deleting messages through IMAP? All thoughts welcome!
by sonic.boom » Tue May 16, 2023 1:18 pm
That's kind of a strange problem you have there. POP3 logins download the email from the Sonic server to your local device and deletes the data from the server. IMAP stores the data in the remote server and syncs it across multiple devices. I can't see what would account for the delay in the deletion time. To rule out an issue with Thunderbird, you could try accessing and deleting your e-mail using our Webmail interface at webmail.sonic.com. You'd have to log into each mailbox separately so you would need the passwords on hand. Delete messages in both mailboxes and see if you notice the same time difference in deletion using Webmail.

It appears there are also options for what to do with messages after deletion in the server settings of Thunderbird. I don't know if perhaps there's a difference between the two accounts that would explain the longer deletion time.
Sean M.
Community & Escalations Specialist
by kgc » Tue May 16, 2023 2:12 pm
I'd be suspicious that it's a local problem with Thunderbird. You might try to have it do a full resync. That has a tendency to fix a certain kind of problem with Thunderbird. Otherwise I assume you already have it excluded from whatever A/V scanner you're using and local OS indexing.
Kelsey Cummings
System Architect, Sonic.net, Inc.
by virtualmike » Wed May 17, 2023 3:50 pm
Thanks to both of you.

Of course, after posting here, that mailbox is acting just like all the others in T-bird. When I take action on a message (or group of them), it happens just as quickly as in the other mailboxes.

However, @kgc's response made me take another look at T-bird's settings, and I discovered I misspoke: T-bird is configured to move a deleted message to the Trash folder, pretty much emulating what should happen in the webmail client. SMH.

If the issue recurs in T-bird, I'll start testing with webmail to see if it's acting similarly.

Thanks agian!
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