Deleted e-mails in an Office 365 Outlook account keep reappearing in the Thunderbird e-mail client

Whatever OS and e-mail client you use, if you search the Web you’ll find plenty of posts about deleted e-mails that reappear after you empty the ‘Trash’/’Deleted Items’/’Recycle bin’ folder. This problem seems to occur mostly with e-mail accounts that use the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) or the Microsoft EWS (Exchange Web Services) protocols.

The obvious thing to check first in the e-mail client is if it has been configured to actually delete the e-mails on the server when you empty the ‘Deleted Items’ folder. Furthermore, internal files called ‘folder index files’ (.msf) in Thunderbird can sometimes become damaged, and these damaged files can also result in deleted e-mails reappearing. There is a ‘Repair Folder’ option in Thunderbird that sometimes fixes this problem. If that does not work, deleting the relevant folder’s .msf file and allowing Thunderbird to rebuild it sometimes fixes the problem. Anyway, I tried all the suggested approaches and more, as well as completely removing the account in Thunderbird (including ticking ‘Remove message data’ and manually deleting any remaining files for that account that remained in the Thunderbird directory). But nothing worked. However, I eventually cracked the problem as explained below.

Let’s just recap my situation:

1. Of the many e-mails in a corporate Office 365 account that I had deleted over the last few months and emptied from the account’s ‘Deleted Items’ folder, five of them would keep reappearing in that account’s ‘Deleted Items’ folder in Thunderbird. This happened if I deleted the e-mails individually from the ‘Deleted Items’ folder and if I right-clicked on the folder and selected ‘Empty Deleted’.
2. Whenever I logged in to the Office 365 Outlook account via a Web browser, the ‘Deleted Items’ folder was empty and it showed ‘Recover items deleted from this folder (0 items)’, i.e. no deleted messages existed.
3. The Samsung e-mail client on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 mobile phone showed the ‘Recycle bin’ for the same account was empty.

All the settings for the account in Thunderbird were correct. Completely removing the account from Thunderbird then adding the account again did not solve the problem, meaning that the problem could not be due to Thunderbird or the ExQuilla add-on Thunderbird uses to enable it to access the Office 365 Outlook account using Microsoft EWS. Even though my Samsung mobile phone’s e-mail client showed the Office 365 Outlook account’s ‘Recycle bin’ was empty, I selected ‘Email settings’ in the Samsung e-mail client, selected the account, scrolled down to ‘Empty Recycle bin’ and tapped it. The following message was displayed:

Empty Recycle bin?

This will permanently delete the items in the Recycle bin.

Cancel            Delete

I tapped ‘Delete’ and the Samsung e-mail client displayed ‘Success’. The five rogue e-mails then disappeared from the ‘Deleted Items’ folder in Thunderbird. The next time I logged in to the Office 365 Outlook account via a Web browser, the ‘Deleted Items’ folder was still empty but it displayed ‘Recover items deleted from this folder (5 items)’. I used the usual Office 365 Outlook procedure to recover the five e-mails and delete them permanently, resulting in ‘Recover items deleted from this folder (0 items)’ being displayed again in Office 365 Outlook in the browser window.

So, there you have it, the problem had nothing to do with Thunderbird or ExQuilla. If you access an Office 365 Outlook e-mail account via an e-mail client on a desktop or laptop and also via an e-mail client on a mobile phone, and you find that e-mails you deleted and emptied from the ‘Deleted Items’/’Trash’/’Recycle bin’ folder in the e-mail client on the desktop/laptop keep reappearing in that folder, try deleting them on all your devices, including your phone, even if the e-mails are not shown in the Office 365 Outlook account in a Web browser nor in the Office 365 Outlook account in a phone’s e-mail client.

Work-around in Linux to switch between single-sided and double-sided printing

I use Gentoo Linux on my laptop, and have drivers installed for quite a few printer manufacturers and models, as I work in multiple offices and they have a wide range of printers and MFPs. To date I have had no trouble printing single-sided (‘simplex’) and double-sided (‘duplex’) documents on the printers that support duplex printing. However, one of the offices I have been working in recently has a Konica Minolta bizhub C368, a floor-standing MFP, and the printer in this MFP did not enable me to switch between single-sided and double-sided printing even though Windows users in the same office could. This article explains how I managed to switch between the two printing modes.

A Linux driver for the bizhub C368 can be downloaded from the Konica Minolta Download Centre. I downloaded the tarball KMbeuUXv1_22_multi_language.tar.gz, extracted the contents to the directory ~/KMbeuUXv1_22_multi_language/ and followed the instructions in ‘BEU Linux CUPS Driver Guide.pdf‘:

user $ cd ~/KMbeuUXv1_22_multi_language
user $ su
root # ./install.pl
root # rc-service cupsd restart

I then used the CUPS Administration page in a browser window to set up the printer.

As I wanted the printer to be the default printer while I was working in that office, I edited the system-wide and user-specific lpoptions files to contain the printer name I had specified to CUPS when setting up the printer:

user $ cat ~/.cups/lpoptions
Default Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368

root # cat /etc/cups/lpoptions
Default Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368

I was then able to print from all the usual applications, except that the applications could only select single-sided printing, even though the printer supports double-sided printing and Windows users in the office could print double-sided. I could not find a setting for this in the CUPS Manager’s ‘Set Default Options’ page for the printer, so I edited the PPD file to change the relevant default option:

root # nano /etc/cups/ppd/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd

I changed the default printing option from:

*DefaultKMDuplex: 1Sided

to:

*DefaultKMDuplex: 2Sided

Then I could print double-sided pages, but selecting ‘single-sided’ in applications would still print double-sided. Now, I don’t know if there is a proper fix for this, but I could not find out how to do it. Therefore I opted for a work-around which is fine for my purposes. Here is what I did…

I created the shell script ~/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.sh containing the following:

#!/bin/bash
echo
echo "Konica Minolta bizhub C368 printer"
echo
echo "Select single-sided or double-sided printing as the default"
echo
# Get the password entry over and done with now
echo "Enter your user account password."
sudo ls > /dev/null
echo
CHOICE=""
while [[ $CHOICE != "X" && $CHOICE != "x" ]]; do
    if [[ $CHOICE != "X" && $CHOICE != "x" ]]; then
        echo
        echo -n "[1]-sided, [2]-sided or e[X]it : "
        read -n1 CHOICE
        echo
    else
        break
    fi
    case $CHOICE in
        [1] ) sudo cp /home/fitzcarraldo/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd.single-sided /etc/cups/ppd/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd
              echo "Single-sided printing has been selected"
        ;;
        [2] ) sudo cp /home/fitzcarraldo/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd.double-sided /etc/cups/ppd/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd
              echo "Double-sided printing has been selected"
        ;;
        [Xx] ) echo; exit;;
        * ) echo; echo " Enter '1', '2' or 'X/x'"
    esac
done

I created the Desktop Configuration File ~/Desktop/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.desktop containing the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=Select single-sided or double-sided printing for Konica Minolta bizhub C368
Comment=Select single-sided or double-sided printing for Konica Minolta bizhub C368
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=konsole -e sh /home/fitzcarraldo/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Select printing sides for KM bizhub C368
GenericName=Select printing sides for KM bizhub C368
Icon=/home/fitzcarraldo/Pictures/Icons/konica-minolta.png
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368
Name=Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-DCOP-ServiceType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

I downloaded a Konica Minolta logo from the Web and used it for the icon for the Desktop Configuration File.

And finally I copied the PPD file to two files and edited them:

~/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd.single-sided

which includes *DefaultKMDuplex: 1Sided

~/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368/Konica_Minolta_bizhub_C368.ppd.double-sided

which includes *DefaultKMDuplex: 2Sided

Now, if I want to switch between single-sided and double-sided printing I just double-click on the icon on my Desktop and a terminal window pops-up allowing me to select the new default:

Konica Minolta bizhub C368 printer

Select single-sided or double-sided printing as the default

Enter your user account password.
Password:

[1]-sided, [2]-sided or e[X]it :