Messages accumulating in mailserver 'Sent' folder

[#1]

I posted this three days ago but it seems to have disappeared. Better luck this time I hope . . . . .

In the last few days I've received this notification. It's obviously an old automated one as the contactus.plus.net link no longer works:-

We're letting you know you have now used more than 75% of your mailbox capacity, and you need to take action to reduce the size of your mailbox. If your overall mailbox size is larger than the 1GB allocated amount, we may have to archive your largest mailbox to bring you under the 1GB limit.

The reason we do this is because large mailboxes can have an adverse effect on other users on the platform.

To help you reduce the overall size, here's a list of your largest mailboxes -

    Mailbox           Size
    default        440.12 MB
    chris           321.716 MB
    Total           761.84 MB

It's easy to keep track of your usage on Webmail. Just follow these steps
1.    Click Personal Settings.
2.    Then choose Folders.
3.    Click on the folder you want to check.
4.    To see the size of the folder, choose Click to get folder size.

Please don't hesitate to get back in touch online at http://contactus.plus.net or by phone on 0800 432 0200 if we can be of help.

Using Webmail I logged into the mailboxes and checked the contents of the folders as instructed above. The results were as follows:

Mailbox               Default         Chris
Inbox                    14MB           20MB
Drafts                     5KB          170KB
Sent                   411MB          244MB
Junk                       5KB          257KB
Deleted Items            0           122KB
Unwanted           289KB          5.5MB

The totals of these values are lower than those in the notification. The differences look to be too great to be accounted for by rounding errors so I don't understand that.

I moved the messages from all the folders except Inbox into Deleted Items. This was a tedious long-winded process since if I tried to select too many messages at once for moving it kept throwing up errors. However I persevered and eventually succeeded in moving them all. Then I repeated the process to delete the messages from Deleted Items after which I rechecked the folders and confirmed they were now empty. I'm hoping that was the correct procedure. I'd be grateful if someone could confirm that.

I'm wondering what is the purpose and function of the Unwanted folder which only appears in the list of mail folders if it's "subscribed". I'd be grateful if someone could explain that.

I'd also welcome an explanation of why all those messages, going back to 2014, had built up in the Sent folder of each mailbox. We use Thunderbird as our mail client on all our PC's and I've set the Server Properties to use POP. My understanding of POP is that messages are not retained on the mailserver and I've set Thunderbird to delete them 7 days after they've been downloaded. This clearly works as there is no excessive build-up of messages in the Inbox folders. I can't understand why outgoing mail has been retained. I have Thunderbird set to keep copies in a local Sent folder but I would have expected it to be purged from the mailserver by default once it had been successfully transmitted and I can't see any setting in Webmail to control that.

I must admit the science of email is somewhat confusing for a bear with very little brain. If someone could offer some simple insights I'd be very grateful. Please be gentle.

[#2]

Hi there,

I'm sorry to see you're having issues with managing your e-mails.

I can't check individual folders for you manually but if you've deleted messages and emptied the Deleted Items folder afterwards, they should be removed from the server our side. 

Regarding the "Unwanted" folder, this isn't one I recognise as a folder we setup automatically, so I suspect the folder has been created via a mail client, possibly Thunderbird, you've setup your e-mails on.

For that issue and regarding sent mail, do you only use POP3 or do you have your e-mails setup as IMAP anywhere else?

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Hi Gandalf, thanks for responding.

All is becoming a little clearer. Both our Android phones use IMAP. That's why I set Thunderbird to keep messages on the server for 7 days. My wife's phone also has the additional 'Unwanted' folder so that must have been the client that created the one on the mailserver although it's strange it was created in both mailboxes when her phone only uses the 'chris' one. I've deleted that folder from her phone, AFAIK it serves no purpose, but at the moment it's still visible on the server and Webmail offers no option to delete it.

I imagine it's also IMAP on the phones that have been accumulating the sent messages on the server and will continue to do so. I guess now that I know about it I'll just have to periodically do a clean up.

[#4]

Hello, cheers for getting back to me.

Ah mystery solved, almost, though I agree a little odd.

Let me know if you need any further help.