On reflection, it occurred to me that transferring an email to a Junk folder might not in itself be a sufficient condition for the email to be considered as junk.

I've modified the filter to add another, initial, condition to 'Set junk status to junk' prior to moving to the junk folder. This has indeed flagged them all as junk. But closing and restarting TB has not removed the older ones. So I suppose these emails all have a hidden flag somewhere indicating the date at which they were declared junk since TB is not taking into account the emails' 'Date'.

Looks like I'll have to wait to see if they get trashed after 21 more days.

It does seem a pity that moving emails to junk is not a sufficient condition to declare their status as junk.

Can anyone confirm that this idea is correct?

I've just moved two junk emails into Local Folders Junk and set delete older than one day. One has a date of today and one has an older date. So I'll have to wait a short while to see if test works. If all goes as expected they should disappear tomorrow.

Interesting result. One email got deleted from Junk and put into Deleted folder as soon as one day had passed.

I should mention that whilst there were 2 emails in the Local Folders Junk folder, only one was actually 'marked as junk' - aka it had the red/orange flame icon and that was the message which got moved to Deleted.

Several days have passed and so I've marked the other one as junk - it now has the coloured flame icon showing in the 'Junk' column header. So we'll see if it suddenly gets deleted and put into Deleted folder.

If it does then there seems to be link between email must be 'marked as junk' in order to get deleted and not just be in the 'Junk' folder.

The 'automatically delete junk older than x days' will mean delete after email has been in Junk after x days.

Thanks, Toad-Hall. That confirms what I thought - that the email also needs to be marked as junk. I've reduced my time in junk from 21 days to 6 days but nothing has been deleted yet.

Maybe the new time delay starts from the moment the delay is set? I'll wait a few more days to see if anything gets deleted.

Time has passed since I reset my Junk settings to delete junk email after 6 days. Individual mail settings as well as Local Folders junk setting have all been set to delete after 6 days for at least 8 days now.

Nothing has been deleted from junk - not even historical stuff from back in September and October nor recent stuff from 8 days ago. All items carry the flame junk icon marking them as spam.

All items in the Local junk folder are there as a result of a mail filter I created which does two things: identify and flag an email as junk; move them to junk on local folders.

Perhaps the setting which sets delay before deletion is intended only to delete those items identified as spam by TB's internal process rather than by a user created filter?

I did notice that if server had marked as spam and put into 'Spam' folder, the flame icon was greyed out. If Thunderbird had decided it was Junk and put in Spam then the flame was coloured.

I moved both from a normal account into 'Local Folders' Junk folder which had the delete after 1 day set.

The one with a coloured flame got deleted as expected. The other did not - but when I manually clicked on the flame icon to mark as junk, it got deleted the next day.

So, it seems to be looking for a coloured flame icon.

It works if Thunderbird auto detected as Junk and it works if I manually mark as junk. I'll see if it works if a filter marks as Junk to test your specific findings.

All my flame icons are coloured. I've never seen a grey flame icon but then again, I've never used adaptive junk settings nor relied on external servers like spam assassin. I prefer to make my own decisions and set my own rules.

Maybe that's the problem?

re :All my flame icons are coloured.

That means you or Thunderbird marked that email as Junk.

Test: I had an email in Inbox which I wanted to mark as junk - but I left it alone. I created a message filter to 'Filter before junk classification' looking for a specific work in Subject and to Mark As Junk and move to Local Folders Junk. Ran it on Inbox so it located that specific email and it put in the Local Folders Junk. In Local Folders Junk that email was marked as junk and it showed a red/orange flame icon.

checked today and email is now in the 'Deleted' folder. So, a manually run filter on folder did work as expected.

Further Testing: In 'Local Folders' > 'Junk Settings' I did have 'Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account' selected. I have switched this off to test whether email gets put into Deleted after a day. I have put email into Junk. I'll report on whether having that option not selected has any effect on results.

I use the adaptive Junk Controls in Thunderbird because it really does a good job. I only have a couple of filters which catch more unusual junk usually created by people who know the parameters they are using are likely to get email into Inbox. You do need to train the Junk Controls by deliberately selecting what is junk and also what is Not junk, so it learns what to do. If you set up your own filters you can end up with hundreds of them which consume time creating. You would never be able to cover as much as Bayesian filtering.

Info on Thunderbird Junk Controls: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-junk-spam-messages https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Help_Documentation:Dealing_with_Junk_E-mail http://kb.mozillazine.org/Junk_Mail_Controls

Thank you for the 3 links which I've looked into. The last one lead me to another https://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_aging This explains that aging works from the date the message is 'sent' and that when the age is reached, the message "will be deleted permanently, not sent to the Trash folder". This seems in contradiction with your experience of finding the message in the deleted folder.

A further paragraph does not agree with my experience: "The automatic deletion of messages will take place when you open a folder. If you change your settings (as described below) with a folder already open, the changes will not be reflected in the currently open folder until you select another folder and then go back to the first folder. "

Otherwise, my filter does what you describe in the first part of your last post - marks a message as junk and sends it to the local junk folder. But there it stays for ever until I manually delete it.

I look forward to the result of the last part of your experiment concerning the adaptive junk controls.

Thank you for the 3 links which I've looked into. The last one lead me to another https://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_aging This explains that aging works from the date the message is 'sent' and that when the age is reached, the message "will be deleted permanently, not sent to the Trash folder". This seems in contradiction with your experience of finding the message in the deleted folder.

That message ageing is not connected to what is being done in this case.

It is refering to this particular setting: Right click on folder and select 'Properties' Select 'Retention Policy' tab OR in 'Account Settings' For Pop accounts select 'Disk Space' It will show you the same retention policy options.

For Imap accounts select 'Synchronisation & Storage' then under 'Disk Space' subsection where it says 'To recover disk space, old mesasges can be permanently deleted, both local copies and originals on the remote server' It will show you the same retention policy options.

Those 'Retention policy' options are based on that message aging... from the date the message is 'sent'.

It is not the same when filtering or manually selecting to put email in a Junk folder and then saying delete after x days. That is based on when it got put into Junk. Some junk mail may have sat in Inbox for a few days or the sender may have put a weird date on it.

A further paragraph does not agree with my experience: "The automatic deletion of messages will take place when you open a folder. If you change your settings (as described below) with a folder already open, the changes will not be reflected in the currently open folder until you select another folder and then go back to the first folder. "

That's to do with refreshing the page or if imap the data sometimes needs time to get up to speed. In some cases people may have the folder only set to check server contents if folder is selected, but others have each folder to check for new mail. It also depends upon whether the server uses IDLE to PUSH new mail. So it may effect some people more than others.

Otherwise, my filter does what you describe in the first part of your last post - marks a message as junk and sends it to the local junk folder. But there it stays for ever until I manually delete it. I look forward to the result of the last part of your experiment concerning the adaptive junk controls.

Not certain the exact time I put in the Junk but it was about 3 PM. The times in this forum are not UK times, so I'm always needing to add at least 6 hours to everything. I altereed it just prioir to my previous posting. It's still in Junk, I've added another one.

If nothing has moved by Monday then we have found the 'trigger'. In which case, I then need to find out whether that's correct or a new bug. Either way, if something is designed not work if disabled then why allow the option to be selected. !! So, I'll set up another test running a previous version.

My local folders junk box is not being cleared of items older than 6 days, my 'clear after' setting. All items are marked with the red junk flame icon and some items are from September, October and more recent November items over 6 days old.

So, no emails marked as Junk were moved if Adaptive Junk controls were disabled. I enabled the 'Adaptive Junk controls' in 'Local Folders' and it quickly cleared one of the emails in Junk - (the one which was put there by filter)and put it in Deleted.

So, it seems it must be marked as junk and the adaptive junk controls need to be enabled. It works ok if Thunderbird put it into Junk whether automatically or if a Message Filter did it.

The one that did not clear was one I manually moved from another junk folder. It had a date into the future which I've just altered to see if it has any effect. I also noted this particular junk email does not have any account reference because technically it not sent to me - this spammer really knows how to mess about with headers. So I'm still working out why this one email did not get moved.

However, alternative is to use the 'Local Folders' 'Junk' folder 'Retention Policy' options.

• Right click on Junk and select 'Properties'
• Select 'Retention Policy' tab
• Uncheck : Use my accounts settings'
• Select 'Delete messages more than X days' days old.'
• Click on 'OK'

Thank you for the idea of using Retention Policy. That has removed all the old stuff from my junk folder and I'll let that take care of this issue in future.

Some of this design looks a bit like a right hand nor knowing what the left hand is doing. It seems odd that messages that have been directed to the local junk folder by whatever means are not automatically deleted by the 'delete after' setting. And with a delete after setting, why would you need a retention policy? Curious.

Further to my previous comment....The one that did not clear was one I manually moved from another junk folder. It had a date into the future which I've just altered to see if it has any effect.

It got moved to Deleted. So, I have established to make sure Account Settings > Local Folders > Junk Settings > 'Automatically delete junk mail older than eg: 6 days' functions as expected:

You must select 'Enable adaptive junk mail controls for this account' Emails must be marked as junk - flame icon is coloured. Emails can be manually put into Junk or Filtered. Emails where spammers have put a date in the future need to have date altered in order to get auto deleted. eg: if 2026 then modify to 2021 It may be just as easy to manually delete as not everyone wants to manually alter an mbox file or may not have downloaded the Header Tools Lite addon which is not suitable for average users.

I think this information means the developers need to make a decision - enabling or not enabling adaptive junk controls should not effect when you auto delete items from junk, but I have found it does. I'll report this as a bug.

However, the per folder retention policy option seems more reliable - I've not tested it with emails that have a date in the future.

A good summary, Toad-Hall. I support that idea that enabling adaptive junk controls should not affect the auto delete items from junk.

I'd go further and say that any item switched into the junk folder should be auto-deleted regardless of whether or not it carries the flame-icon. The simple decision to divert some items into the junk folder should suffice.

I'll consider this problem solved for me because I can use the retention policy.