Mozilla Mailnews FAQ

What is the purpose of "Local Folders"; and how do I get rid of it?

Since you can set up Mozilla to access and post to newsgroups without setting up a mail account, Mozilla needs to store your sent messages somewhere. Local Folders serves that purpose. Additionally, it can be used to store messages from an IMAP account. Getting rid of local folders is not recommended, but you can remove it.

To remove local folders:

1. go through your account settings and make sure no other accounts are pointing to your local folders. [copies & folders -> drafts, sent, templates]
2. Open about:config, and filter default. You should see a few entries that point to local folders. Change those settings, so that newly created accounts are set to put copies & folders in a different location, than local folders. You'll have to look at the settings for your other accounts, in order to know what to set the default to.
3. close Mozilla completely, and backup your prefs.js.
4. Open your prefs.js and find out which server number local folders is assigned to. (probably #2)
5. Using #2 as an example, delete all the corresponding lines that begin with user_pref("mail.server.server2....
   user_pref("mail.server.server2.directory", "C:\\WINDOWS\\APPLICATION DATA\\Mozilla\\profiles\\YourProfile\\xxxxxxxx.slt\\Mail\\Local Folders");
   user_pref("mail.server.server2.directory-rel", "[ProfD]Mail/Local Folders");
   user_pref("mail.server.server2.hostname", "Local Folders");
   user_pref("mail.server.server2.name", "Local Folders");
   user_pref("mail.server.server2.type", "none");
   user_pref("mail.server.server2.userName", "nobody");
   user_pref("mail.root.none", "C:\\WINDOWS\\APPLICATION DATA\\Mozilla\\profiles\\DeinProfil\\xxxxxxxx.slt\\Mail");
6. Using a search tool to search the prefs.js, search for "server2" (remember 2 is just an example here). You'll find which account number is assigned to that server (to make sure, there should be no id assigned to that account). Delete that pref line, and remember the account number.
7. next is the line user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts" Do not delete that line, but remove the section that refers to the account number of your local folders. For instance, if your local folders is account2:
   user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2,account3,account4");
   will be changed to:
   user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account3,account4");
8. next look for the line:
   user_pref("mail.accountmanager.localfoldersserver", "server2");
   Change the server number on that to one of the other servers numbers already set up.
9. save and close your prefs.js.
10. In your profile directory, delete \Mail\Local Folders.