What do the Filter Log (see screenshot) and the Activity Manger (in Tools menu) say?

Did you ever see a "The message could not be filtered to folder 'abc' because writing to folder failed" popup error message? In any case, please have a look at this bug.

Log shows email deleted per filter settings, but email still shows in InBox directory. See Inbox and log images.

I ran the filter manually to get rid of the "Lee Bellinger" email that was sitting in my Inbox. As you can see from the screenshot of the log, the email was "again" deleted.

And when run manually, it actually is deleted? And what version did you eaxctly upgrade from? (See Options > Advanced > Update > Show Update History when in doubt.) Can you also reply to the second question above and look at the bug? If it applies, you can find some workarounds there.

You could also try repairing the Deleted/Trash folder by right-clicking it and selecting Properties > Repair Folder.

if this doesn’t help, open Tools > Error Console, clear it, wait for another message eligible for being filtered (or send a test message), copy what you see in the Error Console and paste it here.

Okay: 1) Error console cleared 2) Trash folder repaired and completely emptied (screenshot before) 3) Update history screenshot below. (Only shows last two. The 3rd would have been 38.x.x 4) I didn't see anything in the referenced "Bug" report that seemed to fit my situation.

I'll let you know if what I've done so far somehow cleared the offending condition.

The "plot thickens"! Shown in the screenshot are two emails supposedly deleted. The first I did manually and it is in fact gone from the Inbox. The second, which was too supposedly deleted, is still in my Inbox. NIETHER of the two emails appears in the gmail IMAP trash, either as viewed by TB nor when I log into the gmail site to view the trash folder there.

There are no errors logged in the Error Console.

I think there is some resemblance to the bug, and at least it’s obvious things aren’t properly synced, possibly due to some Trash corruption.

Can you try this:

1. Open the Thunderbird profile folder using Help > Troubleshooting Information > Show Folder
2. Close Thunderbird
3. In the profile folder, go to the \ImapMail folder
4. Go into the \imap.googlemail.com folder (depening on the name of the Gmail server) and remove the Trash and Trash.msf files
5. Restart Thunderbird and retry. The local Trash folder should be rebuilt and synced automatically. Test for proper functioning.

(This is also described here.)

Your Update Log screenshot shows the updates for Firefox, but of course we were interested in Thunderbird. :) No screenshot needed, I’m just interested in the previouws Thunderbird version, i.e. whether the issue started after a 38.x to 45.x upgrade, or a minor one like 45.4 to 45.5.

If things keep failing, you could set up a new filter to move the messages there instead of Trash and see what happens. If that behaves similar, you could consider reinstalling the previous version that did not suffer the issue, and see if that solves it for now.

You wrote "remove the Trash and Trash.msf files " ONLY Trash.msf file present in that folder. I deleted that file and restarted TB.

I re-directed filtered items to a new local folder and that seems to be working correctly. There were four emails in the new folder this AM and they were not in the Inbox.

Two "normal" emails that were in my Inbox were deleted after I'd given them normal attention. Guess what? Those two emails ARE NOT in the trash, either as viewed by TB or when logging into my gmail account online and looking there.

I will re-examine the "Bug" to see if any of these symptoms fit.

Sorry about sending the wrong update history. As it is, I went from 31.7 .0> 38.5.0 > 45.5.1.

Bill

I've retreated to 38.8.0. No matter what I do I cannot get any emails put into the trash folder.

I have to assume that my profile is somehow corrupted. I have MozBackup and daily Acronis backups so I can recover yesterday's profile if things go bad.

Any suggestions?

Trying to Analise comments 39 and 40 pertaining to the "Bug" gives me a headache and doesn't seem to apply with the exception of "not enough space error" trying to compact. Deleting those files from IMAP/Mail > gmail.com Trash; Sent; Drafts and restarting TB reestablished those folders and the space error went away with the compacts but still no success in getting emails put into the trash.

BTW, I have over 100GBs free space on my SSD so the "space error" is in itself an error.

In addition to having also updated my laptop to 45.5.1, I tested its behavior regarding the trash.

On my laptop, if I delete an email from my Inbox it DOES NOT then appear in my trash. However, if I select drag and drop from my Inbox to the trash the deleted email DOES then appear in the trash. And, being that my email is IMAP that deleted item also appears in the trash as viewed from my desktop.

This view of the problem suggests that TB 45.5.1 has corrupted the profiles on my two machines and having taken my desktop back to 38.8.0 did little to correct the situation. And, it would seem from all of this that the situation has nothing specifically to do with filters per se'.

Is there a utility function that will rebuild the profile without loosing the local folders?

In Server Settings for IMAP accounts, there is a When I delete a message: setting that you may need to check. I have little experience with IMAP, but can imagine this is what affects different behavior for deleting messages compared to dragging and dropping, which is basically a move.

I don’t think the profile is corrupted, but the fun thing is that just like with Firefox, you can always set up another profile (or even several), allowing you to fix errors caused by some setting that would otherwise take a lot of time, i.e. ease the troubleshooting. Since this is about an IMAP account, losing email is no issue either. Afterwards, you can move important files from the other profile as described here.

The Local folders (if you referred to those in Thunderbird) are only used for temporary content, so there would be no need to save it. if you referred to all other existing folders, they would be rebuilt/synchronized with the server contents anyway.

As for MozBackup, I would strongly suggest to stop using it. It is no longer maintained and hence does not follow recent changes in files and other structures in Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, hence leading to serious issues. I’m not sure if you used it previously, but it could even be a possible culprit here.

Thanks for your reply. The IMAP "When property" is set to move deleted files to the IMAP Trash.

My reference to the "Local Folders" are TB folders where I retain emails of interest and later reference. They are stored in the TB profile. It appears that I can export those folders (see screenshot), close TB and delete the profile followed by a fresh install of TB 38.5.0. (I'll test the import of the Local Folders on my laptop before deleting the profile on the desktop.)

Your note about the Local Folders being temporary suggests there's a better way to "retain for later reference" than what I've been doing???

I understand your warning about MozBackup. I don't think I've used it since way back with TB 31.x.x and early Windows 7 Pro. I will discard my copy.

I FOUND IT!!!

I don't know if the TB settings got messed with during the upgrade to 45.x.x or what. I know I haven't been in the server settings for the gmail account in a couple of "Years". Anyway, in the Advanced settings the "IMAP server directory" had become blank so TB had no correct linkage to the IMAP Trash. Once I entered [Gmail] into that field "delete operations" returned to normal operation.

Thanks for all your thought and attention.