Mail subfolder in Thunderbird Profile

I'm in the process of reinstalling my OS. I've created a new Thunderbird profile for myself, but I'm a little perplexed about a subfolder showing up within my Mail folder.

I only download from a single email account, so I opted to go with the default (Global Inbox). In my profile's Mail folder, there is one folder called "Local Folders ", and another one called "pophm.sympatico.ca" (which is the POP setting for my ISP).

I copied my Inbox file (4591KB) from the "Local Folders" in my old profile to my new profile, and, sure enough, all my old mail shows up properly when I open Thunderbird.

But there's also an Inbox file in the pophm.sympatico.ca folder, and it's 74,472KB!! I tried renaming it 'OtherInbox' and copying it into the "Local Folders ". When I opened TB next, a new folder was there, called OtherInbox, but after several minutes (TB said it was building some kind of a file? folder?), it showed 0 messages. Yet the file still shows up as 74,472KB in size.

In looking at my old profile, I discovered there is also a second subfolder in my Mail folder there - that one named 127.0.0.1 (which was the POP setting I used to use when I still had AVG scanning my email). The inbox file in that folder is also 74,472KB - the exact same size as the file in the new pophm.sympatico.ca folder!

What are these secondary folders in my Mail folder, why are their inboxes so big (and why are they identical in size to one another), and why can't I get their contents to display in Thunderbird?

Thanks!

 

Thank you for the reply, TonyT.

Are you saying that individual messages can be copied to the new Inbox? I copied the entire 'Inbox' file from the old profile, and that accomplished what I wanted: all the emails in my old profile's Inbox are, indeed, showing up in my new profile.

What I don't understand is why TB creates a second subfolder within my profile's Mail folder every time I create a new profile - the one called 127.0.0.1 (in my old profile), and the one called pophm.sympatico.ca (in my new profile). I have manually removed the pophm.sympatico.ca subfolder from my current profile, but it's automatically recreated the next time I open TB (albeit with an Inbox 0KB in size, vs. the 74,472KB file size of the original pophm.sympatico.ca Inbox).

I'm just mystified as to why these second subfolders are created in the first place, and why they consistently happen to have the identical set of files, namely:
Inbox (74,472 KB), both created 4/2/2007
Inbox.msf (2KB)
msgFilterRules.dat (1KB)
popstate.dat (1KB)
Trash (0KB)
Trash.msf (2KB)

I tried renaming the pophm.sympatico.ca Inbox to 'Mystery' and pasting it into my Local Folders folder, but the 'mystery' folder comes up empty when I look inside it.

What I'd like to be able to do is see what's in these Inboxes! Any suggestions as to how I might do that?

 

Rebecca,
I need some clarification. In first place when you, manually, deleted the subfolder, how was it done? It should be done with TB closed, from your Profile folder.

Do you, really, create a new profile? What is in each profile? You should have all the same files and folders.
To me, a

is a Mail account, unless you chose to name your profile that way. Profiles are of the format xxxxxx.default, etc.
If you want to have your account folders out of sight, just remove the account from Tools|Account Settings. If you want the contents, go to your Mail|account, with Tb closed, right click|rename the Inbox, and delete the Inbox.msf file. You can keep the renamed folder in the same account. Why would you move it Local Folders, beats me.
If your total Kb is 0, you will not see anything, but, otherwise right click on the Inbox and open with Wordpad. All your e-mails are back to back. The .msf file is the header file, and don't bother with it. What TonyT was saying, I think was to copy (or move messages from the list in your mail, not out side an open TB.
As for 127.0.0.1 it is the "localhost" address. I am using FreePOP which allows me to get e-mails from accounts, normally, not available, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
How your came about, I don't understand.
Anyway, let's treat profiles and account as separate entities. I am using one profile for TB2.0.23, and another one for 3.0. Each profile has, at least seven accounts. Each account has its set of Inbox, Inbox.msf, etc.