I was really sure there would be a bug filed for this, but I cant find it. It would be nice (essential) to have an "expunge deleted mail now" button on the taskbar and an option in the menus for people who have their imap mailbox options set to "expunge on exit" as opposed to "delete immediately". Currently you have to leave the folder and return to have the mail expunged which is annoying.

In fact, you can't just leave the folder, you have to quit messenger altogether before the mail marked as deleted is actually expunged. This makes it even more essential. I hope i'm not missing something quite obvious already existing in the UI :)

huang: can i mark my own bug as new ? :) Its just an RFE after all and i cant find dupes Keen to get this in as I think it makes an almost essential 1.0 enhancement

Seth ? can we mark this as new ? It seems a pretty obvious addition and I still can't find a dupe for it. Ability to "expunge now" is essential since you have to quit mail/news to get the expunge to happen...

According to bug 146784, [file -> compact folders] will "expunge deleted mail now." Check out the Help section on using Mozilla Mail -> Deleting Messages. Later in the options for deleting messages is this nugget: "Move it to the Trash folder" is recommended unless you are instructed to use a different setting by your system administrator or service provider. Messages marked as deleted are removed only when you compact folders. So the functionality is there, but clearer terminology/directives for those who use both pine (which has no concept of compacting folders or a "safety" trash folder) and mozilla mail would be helpful...

While [file->compact folders] definitely issues an expunge command, it's very annoying for there not to be a button or an accelerator to do it.

From RFC 3501: The EXPUNGE command permanently removes all messages that have the \Deleted flag set from the currently selected mailbox. Thus sending a single EXPUNGE is not enough. To "compress folders" (note: plural), every folder must be selected and and expunged.

fixing summary - we have a menu item for this - the context menu for the selected folder has a compact command.

If not build in an accelerator button for this function, at least pity the users and add a keycombo for it. (May I suggest CTRL-E, as in, "Expunge".) Single folder or all folders, doesn't matter to me. I simply prefer to mark messages as deleted and then manually expunge them from the current mailbox once I'm certain I've reviewed the changes. This is similar to behaviours in Mulberry and Evolution, albiet Evolution offers you the ability to "hide" messages marked as deleted. This feature would help immensely.

I concur

(In reply to comment #8) > If not build in an accelerator button for this function, at least pity the users > and add a keycombo for it. (May I suggest CTRL-E, as in, "Expunge".) I agree with that. But currently Ctrl-E is bound to "Edit message as new" in ThunderBird, feature that I find useless to have a shortcut. Ctrl-E is what Evolution uses.

Someone has written a small extention for the english Version of TB that adds a compact button to the customize Menu of the toolbar at http://compactfolder.mozdev.org/ I would really like to see this integrated into TB....making it an extension is a lot of overhead, the core code seems to be only a few lines, but you have to support a lot of files for the translation of "Compact" and "Remove deleted messages" to any supported language, create icons for different themes, etc.

Reporter, do you want this button on the Windows taskbar or on the program's toolbar? I assume you want the latter. If so, please correct the summary of this bug. Prog.

i also agree. i've searched for such an option in several menus, but didn't find anything. only the option to "Expunge" the incoming-folder on quit the program. so all mails marked as deleted in other folders (such as the junked-folders) won't be deleted.

What's the Thunderbird bug for this? (sorry, I couldn't find it)

Found it: bug 245607

bug 75927 has been fixed (ie providing this button in Thunderbird). Shouldn't that one be marked as dupe of it too?

No, this is for seamonkey.