Nstmp Folders In Thunderbird

I started having issues on my C drive with space per thunderbird when it tried to compact a folde. Thunderbird was eating up a lot of space.

I saw the disk space usage using WinDriStat

C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\9c9kqkb6.default\ImapMail\imap.gmail.com

I was able to get back space by removing these nstmp files

Here's the link to the background on nstmp: https://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/05/nstmp-folders-in-thunderbird/

And a snippet from the webpage cited above is below:

Thunderbird is creating the nstmp folders when it is compacting folders. Note that the folder is created in the same folder it is compacting. Since it is creating a temporary folder and filling it with data during the process, you may run into storage issues depending on the size of the folder you are compacting and the available free storage space on your hard drive.

When Thunderbird is interrupted during folder compacting it will not delete the nstmp folders. These folders contain temporary data that is required to complete the process. If it was interrupted, it contains information up to the point where it was stopped.

Compacting will stop when Thunderbird is (accidentally or due to a crash) closed during compacting or when a new email arrives during that operation. It will also stop when you close the Thunderbird email client during the operation.

You can avoid the last by checking the status bar of the email program before you close it down. If you see done compacting there, closing it won't have any ill-effects.

Those nstmp folders can normally be deleted but a user should check the original folder to make sure that it still contains all the mails that are listed in the nstmp folder. If that is the case the folder can be easily deleted by right-clicking it and selecting delete from the context menu.