I’ve been using Thunderbird for a while now and it wasn’t until recently that I learned something quite valuable. Thunderbird doesn’t permanently delete anything!

I turned on a setting the other day that caused me to loose a lot of email. I paniced, did some researching and found my mail. It was still there, just hidden. Modified a few files and it all came back. Phew.

Since then I’ve learned of the Compact feature in Thunderbird. You can turn it on so it runs automatically, but it’s off by default. What this does is it actually deletes deleted messages. Forever.