Compact folders removes the space occupied by deleted messages. It has nothing to do with moving to trash or not. We also do it implicitly when the number of deleted messages for a folder is over 20 (i think).
Navin Ben Ruppel wrote: > Oh, okay thanks. Right now I mozilla just move messages to trash, so I > guess it doesn't apply until I delete messages in my trash folder. > Thanks. > > Lincoln Ramsay wrote: > >> Ben Ruppel wrote: >> >>> I would like to know exactly what compact folders does to IMAP >>> folders. It suggests there is no dataloss, but there has to be some >>> tradeoff. Anyone know? Does it interfere with use of Webmail with >>> the same mailbox? >> >> >> >> I had Mozilla using my Exchange mailbox as IMAP. When I deleted a >> message in Mozilla, it still appeared in Outlook. However, when I >> compacted the folder, the message disappeared. There's a setting to >> move deleted items to the trash or just delete them now. The latter >> would, I assume, mark the message as deleted then compact the folder. >> >> It all comes from the way Unix mail programs store mail. A mail >> "folder" is really a giant text file. When you delete an item, it >> marks it as deleted (in the message header) and copies it to the trash >> "folder". Compacting folders removes all "deleted" messages. >> >
