Before you can use the two buttons you will have to configure the
preferences of the extension. Open the extensions window in Thunderbird, select the Xpunge
entry and then click on the "Preferences" button at the bottom of the extensions window.
The "Xpunge Preferences" window contains three tabs, one labelled "Xpunge", one
labelled "MultiXpunge" and one labelled "Timer".
The "Xpunge" tab contains two checkboxes that control the "Empty Trash Folder" and
the "Compact Folders" actions. The idea behind this extension ever since its conception
was to use both actions, however they have been made optional for more flexibility.
Both checkboxes are selected by default.
The "MultiXpunge" tab has two separate lists on the left side, one for selecting accounts that will have
their Trash Can emptied and another one for selecting accounts/folders that will be compacted.
Each list shows a counter that displays the total number of entries it contains.
The drop-down list on the top right side contains all the accounts you have set up
in Thunderbird and using the two buttons you can add and remove accounts from the
list on its left. The drop-down list on the bottom right side contains the complete folder tree
of all the accounts set up in Thunderbird and using the two buttons you
can add and remove whole accounts or individual folders from the list on its left.
The lists do not contain any entries by default so you will have to configure them
before "MultiXpunge" can do something.
To add an account/folder, select the account/folder from one of the drop-down lists and click the
respective "Add" button.
Note that when the "MultiXpunge" tab is displayed, the drop-down lists will display the
name of an account but the account is not considered selected (so the "Add" buttons are disabled).
You will have to expand a drop-down list and select an account/folder (either the one displayed or a different
one) for the respective "Add" button to become enabled.
When an account is selected for compacting from the bottom drop-down list, " (whole)" is inserted
after its name in the list,
whereas a folder is followed by " on " and the name of the account it belongs to. The
corresponding "Add" button
does not do any checking, so nothing prevents the user from selecting a whole account and also
selecting individual folders from that account. No checks are done during compacting either, so
in the case just described the selected folders would be compacted twice. It is up to the user to
avoid this simple redundancy.
Currently you can only add one account (or folder) at a time and of course you are not allowed to add
the same account (or folder) more than once.
To remove an account/folder, select the corresponding row from a list on the left side
and click the corresponding "Remove" button. The lists do not allow selecting multiple
entries. The "Remove" buttons should not do anything
when no account/folder has been selected, even if the buttons are enabled.
All entries in all four lists display tooltips when the mouse pointer is placed over them, which
contain additional information for each entry.
In the (highly unlikely but "you know better") event that you wish to have two accounts with
the same name, you can use the tooltips to distinguish them. This is the only case when
multiple entries with the same name should exist in the lists.
If you delete an account that has been added to one of the two lists on the left side, the account will
probably still be present in the list next time you open the Preferences window (although the account
should not be processed if you use the "MultiXpunge" button). However, the deleted account should not be
present in the list after you restart Thunderbird.
All accounts/folders are processed in the order they have been added to the respective list.
The extension is supposed to skip IMAP accounts if Thunderbird is in offline mode.
It also skips emptying the trash folder for NNTP accounts, which do not have a trash folder.
The "Timer" tab controls the timer feature, which is completely detached from the functionality
of the "MultiXpunge" button, which means that regardless of whether you are interested in the timer or not,
you can just continue using the "MultiXpunge" (and the "Xpunge") button as usual. The timer feature is
disabled by default.
The configuration is similar to that of the "MultiXpunge" button, so you will first have to manually
add some accounts in order for the timer to actually do something. As mentioned above, the accounts
you add here are not connected in any way to the accounts you have configured the "MultiXpunge" button to process.
There are two extra elements in the "Timer" tab. One of them is a checkbox called "Enable the timer only
on the first window", which controls whether the timer will be enabled on multiple Thunderbird windows.
This applies to main Thunderbird windows (i.e. opened by right-clicking on a folder and selecting "Open
in New Mail Window"), not the ones opened by right-clicking on a message and selecting "Open Message in
New Mail Window",
which do not contain a timer anyway. If this checkbox is checked, only the first window will have a timer attached. In this
case, if multiple windows are open and the one that was opened first is closed, there is no way to enable
the timer on the rest of the windows for the current session. This is why users who like to have multiple
windows open are given the choice to control this. However, enabling the timer on multiple windows and
having it active through the preferences, means that there will be a separate timer running on each window
opened subsequently, something that will result in the same timer actions (emptying trash/compacting folders)
being repeated redundantly.
The other extra element is the checkbox that actually controls the timer
("Xpunge automatically..."), since the timer is activated/deactivated by it. This checkbox has
two components, in the form of textboxes. An interval for the first expunction and an interval for
subsequent expunctions, both defined in minutes. The intervals can be any integer from 0 to 99999 (which
should be more than enough). If both intervals are larger than zero, say 1 and 30, then an expunction will
occur 1 minute after the Thunderbird startup, and then an expunction will occur every 30 minutes after that,
so at 31, 61 and so on minutes after Thunderbird startup. The user can select to expunge only once per session,
by setting the second interval to 0 and the first interval to the desired number. If the first interval is 0
and the second one non-zero, say 30, then an expunction will occur every 30 minutes after Thunderbird startup,
so at 30, 60 and so on minutes. If both intervals are 0, no expunction will happen. Both textboxes will reset
their value to 0 whenever an invalid number is entered, but as mentioned above a value of 0 deactivates the timer,
so the smallest valid interval is 1 minute. Note that when compacting large accounts, 1 minute may not be enough
time for compacting to finish, so it is up to the user to define a reasonable interval for the timer.
The timer feature has been implemented in such a way that only the second interval has a "positive" effect
on the current Thunderbird session. This means that changing the first interval through the preferences
will not have any effect on the current session, unless it is set to 0, in which case the first expunction
will not occur if it has not already done so. On the other hand, changing the second interval has both
a "negative" (when set to zero) and a "positive" (when set to a positive integer) effect on the current
session, and in the latter case the minutes start counting either right away or after the first
expunction (if it has not occurred yet).
There is now also a menu for Xpunge, added under the "Tools" menu on the main Thunderbird window,
which allows the user to access the Preferences and disable the timer for the duration of the current
session. So the "Disable (This Window Only)" menu item overrides the "Xpunge automatically ... " checkbox
in the preferences window until Thunderbird is restarted. Note that this menu item acts only as a "disable"
option. When it is selected (checked) and the checkbox in the "Timer" preferences is also checked, the
timer will be stopped. However, when it is deselected, the timer will not start running unless the
checkbox in the "Timer" preferences is checked.
Notice that the menu item controls the timer of a single window only, whereas the preferences set up
in the Preferences window are shared among multiple Thunderbird windows.
There are a few facts about the behaviour of the timer (the second interval defined in the preferences)
that you should keep in mind. The timer does not start running at the time it is set up through the
preferences (i.e. when the preferences are saved by clicking on the "OK" button). It runs for the first
time after the specified interval has passed. There might also be an added delay of (at most) one minute
due to the way the timer is implemented. The same thing happens when the "Disable (This Window Only)" menu
item is deselected. If the checkbox in the preferences is checked, the timer will start running after
the specified interval. A similar thing also happens when Thunderbird is first started if the checkbox
in the Timer preferences is checked. The timer is set up immediately but does not run immediately.
Instead, there is a delay equal to the specified interval before it runs for the first time.
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The extension adds two buttons on the main Thunderbird toolbar,
one called "Xpunge" and another one called "MultiXpunge". Notice that the buttons are not visible by default. You
will have to manually add them to the toolbar, by following these instructions. Also,
if you have not already done so, please read the following notice before installing
this extension. The "Xpunge" button
works on a single account, while "MultiXpunge" works on multiple accounts.
"Xpunge" compacts all the folders of an account (i.e. it has the same functionality as
the "File -> Compact Folders" menu item, not the "Compact This Folder" context menu item contained in the
popup menu that appears when right-clicking on a single folder), while
"MultiXpunge" can be configured to compact individual folders as well as whole accounts.
In order to use "Xpunge", you first have to select any folder in an account and then use the button to empty the
trash folder and compact all the folders of that account. On the other hand, you do not have to select any folders
before using "MultiXpunge", you can do it from any place in the Thunderbird window.
