Perhaps you are overthinking this. Understandable coming from the world of pop, but not applicable to imap - the imap defaults are decent and sane about keeping messages. The only thing I change is not immediately marking messages as read.

To lead with three items: 1. If you are reading about other losing messages, these are likely exceptional cases, please provide links. Or old - old being from older than 1 year, or even 3 months 2. Significant improvements have been made even in the last few months with version 128. 3. Some users conflate messages lost with situations where messages still exist but are not displaying.

Now, what have you been seeing with version 128.

Hi Wayne and thanks for your quick reply to my situation. I'm not sure of your location, but FWIW l'm in Australia, Sunday @ 11.12pm, replying via my phone, so l will keep this msg as short as possible. With respect Wayne, l find your reply somewhat defensive and condescending. I do not need to qualify myself with regard to experience using Thunderbird, however l have been using MT for 15 years plus, so as a Moderator don't assume l have just come over from POP to IMAP. You would be very wrong. Nevertheless l again thank you for your time. May l ask that you re-read my request and look at the attached screen shots. Your quote, "The only thing I change is not immediately marking messages as read." is presumptuous because l cannot, repeat...cannot change that setting. Maybe l did not explain that problem clearly in the beginning, if so, my bad, however if l could deselect that option then we would not be having this discussion. Obviously that is the first and most obvious thing to do. So may l ask you Wayne, can you explain then, why l cannot uncheck ''"Mark all messages as being read"? That is my main problem at the moment. Cheers

PS: With regard to your Item #1...trust me, there are quite a few 128 users becoming frustrated with the same issue as l am having. I don't have the time to be quoting users comments on forums and Google in general. Don't believe me? Search for yourself.

I can't decide how you read what I wrote - but I often write by making no assumptions about the capabilities or technical knowledge of the poster. Let's leave it at that.

> Your quote, "The only thing I change is not immediately marking messages as read." is presumptuous because l cannot, repeat...cannot change that setting.

Then THAT is what we need to resolve. Not introduce workarounds. If you're not up for that, then someone else will need to assist you.

Regarding not being able to uncheck "Automatically mark messages as read"...

1. Is that the only item under Reading & Display" that you are unable to change? 2. Do Help > Troubleshoot Mode. In that mode, are you able to change that setting? And does the setting stay after Help > start normal? 3. If #2 did not work, start Thunderbird normally, do Settings, try to uncheck the box, do ctrl+shift+J to show the Error Console, change the "Filter" to show errors only (see screen shot), please post your screen shot 4. Have there been any settings you have changed that are not retained after restart?