thunderbird extremely slow deleting emails

[vhehn]

for two years i have been fighting a thunderbird bug. you would think after that long you would have fixed it. when i delete an email it takes up to 5 seconds to delete. the program just freezes during that time. it has to do with the windows virus program not working with thunderbird. 5 or 6 times a day i have to go into windows security and disable real time scan and then it works fine. the problem is windows realtime scan wont stay disabled. is there a work around?

[Mizar]

Most ways to disable it would endanger your system.

The best way is getting yourself a real antivirus program.

[AntonO]

I use bitdefender and and worked fine until the latest update. Now it is unusable. Multiselect to delete just deletes a single message in the selected group, which takes forever, and deleting single messages takes a minimum of 5 sec

[webdev]

I have the same problem, using Win11

[vhehn]

i wonder if they will ever fix it or if they even care? they keep asking me for a donation but u have been fighting this for years and nothing has been fixed and i cant get a response out of them.

[Seeburg2]

I used to love Thunderbird. Now since they "updated" it, this deletion issue makes it annoying and almost unusable. It is NOT my OS or the computer. This started happening with the last update. Please restore the old method of deletions. It actually worked.

[Saramon]

For Windows Anti-Virus got to:

Virus & Threat Protection Settings > Exclusions > Add or remove Exclusions

Add following folders: (Just adding the Local folder didn't work for me)

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

[adowdell50]

I did exactly as you said and restarted the Thunderbird email client and the slow delete problem was fixed.  Now works again as expected.  Thanks so much!

[mdcorreia]

It works. It fixes the slow delete problem. But by excluding those Local Folders from the Antivirus Protection we do not put our system at risk by not having the AV analysing the content of the email we receive?

[bsfinkel]

The question posed by mdcorreia above has not been answered.  Is there a security risk by excluding these two directories from A/V?

[bsfinkel]

I tried posing this earlier today; I used a new account because this forum seems not to have remembered the account that I used previously on this forum.  I got a "making moves" for my posting, but I do NOT see it here.  So I am re-posting.  I had the slowness in message deletion in the past, and the problem vanished.  In recent weeks it has returned.  I have not kept records, so I do not know when it started.  The Thunderbird versions I have installed:

     06/25/2024 09:36 Thunderbird 64-bit 115.12.2 
     07/26/2024 09:43 Thunderbird 64-bit 115.13.0 
     07/31/2024 13:19  Thunderbird 64-bit 128.0.1esr

I have tried the "solution" above: Virus & threat protection settings --> Exclusions --> Add or remove exclusions:  \AppData\{Local,Roaming}\Thunderbird\Profiles  and the problem did not go away.  It takes 70 seconds to delete 79 messages.

[jmurtari]

Perfect, great fix!

[Bad-Mad]

I don't think it's such a good idea to exclude Thunderbird from the virus scanner. You should first think about what the virus scanner is primarily there for and how viruses most frequently get onto your computer.

I have been experiencing the problem of slow deletion since version 128 (esr 32bit).

OS: Windows 10 pro, AV: ESET EPS 11

I think excluding email folder monitoring by the virus scanner is a very fatal idea, even if it might solve the problem of slow deletion, it creates a much bigger security problem.
For those for whom this is not a problem, they should consider doing without virus protection altogether. And please don't start the discussion about virus scanners and snake oil again, it doesn't belong here.

[texasred]

I updated to 128 64 bit a few days ago. The delete is super slow. No problems with Thunderbird for many years until now. Running Win 10.

[texasred]

I have an update. If the email has been read it deletes like normal. It is the unread emails that take 10-20 seconds to delete.

[bsfinkel]

This is an update to my post above, but I decided to post it here at the end of the thread because texasred posted an update yesterday.  I just tried to delete 15 e-mail messages, and it took "no time".  Just like TB used to behave.  I have no idea what has changed.  I am still running 128.0.1esr.  I clicked on "About", and TB started downloading an update.  But I have not yet updated.  I then went to Windows Settings, and I removed the two exclusions for Local and Roaming that I had added a few days ago.  I then deleted around 20 mail messages - there was no delay as I had been experiencing.  I upgraded to 128.1.0esr, and I deleted 16 mail messages without any delay.  I am a retired IT professional, and I have NO IDEA what was causing the problem or what corrected the problem.

[Kyo_PL]

Same issue. Both in 105 and 128.1.0esr. It is definetly Windows Defender doing this. Disabled makes TB work great but is it high risk 😕

I use Win10, all updates up to date.

[wsmwk]

> Same issue. Both in 105 and 128.1.0esr. It is definetly Windows Defender doing this. Disabled makes TB work great but is it high risk 😕

You need not totally disable defender.  Just create an exception for Thunderbird - it should still catch viruses if they try to open.

[silverflash54]

in my case,once i emptied the trash of previously deleted emails within TB, TB now deletes quickly.

[wsmwk]

> in my case,once i emptied the trash of previously deleted emails within TB, TB now deletes quickly.

@silverflash54 do you happen to know roughly how many messages where in trash?

[vhehn]

how do you do that?

[Bad-Mad]

In my case, the problem or solution is that the behavior only occurs with unread messages. So if I mark all messages in a folder as read (even if I haven't read them at all), they are deleted normally and quickly. Thunderbird therefore handles read and unread messages differently when deleting them.

[obseus]

Some of the above fixes work but only for a short time... strange! Others not at all.

I have thunderbird 128.2.0esr. But the problem came with 128.1.1esr, I believe.

Marking messages unread before deleting worked fine for the first 4-6 messages

Emptying the trash folder the same. Quick for the first 4-5, then slow again.
Reducing the size of the inbox from 2Gb to 0.5 Gb by archiving messages give a similar effect: first 10 messages we deleted quickly, from then on slow again.

It makes no difference between read and unread messages.
And on my Win11 excluding the profile folders from being defended didn't help.

Even turning off windows defender does not help, as I see right now in this very moment.

When it freezes while deleting msgs, I see on bottom left status box the message "downloading message". Wtf? There is nothing to download at this stage. It's Pop3 and not imap and it's set to not just download the headers, but the complete mails. external content isn't the cause either - that's downloaded automatically. What is it downloading? Or why is it showing that satus msg?

Only one thing seems to help: running TB in safe mode.

In safe mode you can delete messages in the same cadence as killing enemies in Diablo.
What does safe mode do?

Deactivate add-ons and hardware accelleration.

I have no addons. All removed a week ago.
So, it must be the hw accelleration.

But it's not. Even slower now.
Global search and indexing isn't it either.

I'm giving up. Wtf else can cause this annoying behaviour?

[Bad-Mad]

Mark all messages in a folder as read! Not unread.

[obseus]

Can't do that. I need certain emails to remain marked. That's my todo items.
If found now a solution that works:

Betterbird! A fork of T-bird. No issue there. Just moved all stuff like mails, filters, identities and it works flawless...

[Bad-Mad]

Why should you leave messages that you want to delete marked as unread? I don't understand that. Normally you delete messages whose content you know, i.e. that you have already read. And with read messages, deletion works as normal (at least in my case).

Switching to Betterbird may be a solution for you, but it doesn't help Thunderbird users at all and it doesn't solve the problem. The problem should be solved, not circumvented. What happens if Betterbird is no longer maintained at some point? We have already seen several open source projects come and go. Thunderbird has been around for a very long time, despite some problems.

Small addendum:

If you switch to “Betterbird 115.15.0-bb32 ‘Superstar’ (September 3, 2024)”, then you can also stay with “Thunderbird 115.15.0 ESR” and deactivate the automatic update. Even the developers of Betterbird still advise against version 128:

“Note that Thunderbird 128 and hence Betterbird 128 is shipping with a broken backend, causing IMAP folder corruption under some circumstances. Currently, we do not recommend version 128 for productive use.”

[ecere]

Go to windows security and virus protection settings and exclude these two folder from being scanned:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

It should solve that issue!