Tips & Tricks

Although we’re in the business of helping organisations make the most of technology, we recognise that you may sometimes encounter issues which you’d like to deal with yourself, if only you could find useful documentation to guide you.

Documentation on almost everything exists on the internet, the problem is finding what you want; searching can be effective but what we hope to provide here is easy access to guidance to achieve useful tasks.

We are keen to expand this by adding information that is useful to our clients. Sometimes we write a howto, other times we provide links to good sources.

If you don’t find help on a particular issue that concerns you, by all means drop us an email and we’ll try to point you in the right direction.

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How to empty the Trash folder in Roundcube webmail

So you’ve responded to the warning message about your inbox being full; you’ve spent a while deleting old messages and your Inbox is now looking much smaller. But bear in mind that those emails are now lurking in the “Trash” folder, still taking up the same amount of disk space on your server! 

Here’s how to remove them completely to create the extra space you’d been hoping to gain:

1. Log into Roundcube.

2. Click/Select the “Trash” folder.

3. In the bottom left corner of the screen you will see the folder options icon.

4. Click the “Cog” icon to show the “Folder Options” menu. Then select “Empty”.

How to back up your Thunderbird email in Windows 10 and Linux

Mozilla’s Thunderbird is a great email program (we use it!) but it doesn’t have any built in backup tools. If something goes wrong, or you want to move your profile to another computer, you’ll need a backup. 

Windows 10

First of all, make sure Thunderbird is not running.

Open Windows Explorer. In Folder Options, enable “Show Hidden Files, Folder and Drives” .

Then browse to C:\Users\yourloginname\AppData\Roaming, where you will see a folder named Thunderbird.

The Thunderbird folder contains all your Thunderbird settings and address book, as well as all your emails, so it is this folder that you need to copy to your external drive, desktop, or wherever, as your backup.  It’s likely to be a very large amount of data so expect it to take a long time!

When you’re done, don’t forget to disable the hidden files view in Windows Explorer by selecting “Don’t Show Hidden Files, Folder and Drives”.

Linux

Make sure that Thunderbird is not running.

Open File Manager (Thunar). Select “Show Hidden Files” from View in the menu bar (or use keyboard combination Ctrl +H) .

In your Home directory (usually your name) look for a hidden directory named .thunderbird (the preceeding dot is part of the directory name and signifies that the directory is hidden) . This is where all your emails, address book and configuration files are stored. It is this directory that you need to copy to your external drive or wherever you want to store your backup. Expect it to take quite a while – it is likely to be a large amount of data.

When you’re done, don’t forget to disable the hidden files view in your File Manager by deselecting “Show Hidden Files” from View in the menu bar (or use keyboard combination Ctrl +H) .