Do you have a POP mail account?

If yes, then it is usual to download emails off the server, store them in your Thunderbird Profile mail account on your computer and the copy is deleted off the server.

However, it is possible to change this, but then you would need to periodically logon to webmail to ensure your quota is not used up.

Tools > Account Settings or Menu icon ? Options > Account Settings or right click on mail account in folder pane and select 'Settings'

click on 'Server Settings' for the pop mail account select: 'leave message on server'

in addition you can also select further options. If you only want to keep the messages on the server for eg: a month - maybe because you do a monthy backup and the messages on the server will act as a backup until you perform your monthy email backup. then select: 'for at most eg: 30 days'

If you delete an email and you do not want the copy on the server saved then select: 'Until I delete them'.

click on OK to save changes.

re :The reason might be that I have installed Thunderbird, then un-installed it?

Are you saying that you currently are not using and have not reinstalled Thunderbird?

Thunderbird program and Thunderbird Profile containing emails are not stored in the same place. Uninstalling Thunderbird only removes the program. You would had to locate the profile and delete it as a separate thing.

It is possible that you still have your Thunderbird Profile containing emails. Install Thunderbird to be able to see those emails.

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/all/

Go into the settings I explained in earlier response and set the pop mail account to leave a copy on the server.

Now you have to make a choice.

Is a POP mail acount going to work for you? If you only tend to use one computer then POP is fine, once you have changed the setting to leave a copy on the server, should you do any travelling them you can also see any new emails on the server via webmail. So making the 'leave a copy' changes should resolve the removal off server issue.

If you use more than one device to access your mail and travel a lot or use more than one computer then you may prefer to use an IMAP mail account - although I should point out that anyone can use IMAP. IMAP sees a remote view of the server, so all your emails are now only on the server which you can delete via Thunderbird or webmail. In other words if you delete an email in Thunderbird, it will delete off server and also if you delete off server, it will get deleted from Thunderbird imap mail account. Some people use their 'Local Folders' mail account to act like a backup to keep copies of important mail. Of course it would still be wise to keep additional backup on external device.

Assuming you yahoo account has imap forwarding selected as one the options then you could just create another mail account for the same email adress, but this time make syre you create an imap mail account.

Then move all pop mail account emails into suitable folders in 'Local Folders' mail account. Once the imap mail account has been created, you could then select to put a copy back onto the server. in 'Local Folders' mail account; right click on email and select 'Copy to' imap mail account folder.

Allow some time for server to get updated. check via webmail - is the email now on server - if yes then you can proceed to use the copy to imap method.

Once all the emails are back on the server and viewable via imap mail account, then you can delete/remove the pop mail account. In 'Account Settings' select the pop mail account click on 'Account Actions' select 'Remove account' click on OK

You may as well leave the emails in Local Folders because it can act as type of backup

Thank you very much for your suggestions, I appreciate a lot your help. The bad news is that I have logged into the webmail version of Yahoo and I cannot find any messages older than 16th of December, 2013 in my Inbox. But I can find all the Sent items. I need to mention that I have left Thunderbird with its default settings, as I have no idea the emails could be deleted from Yahoo servers :( And I remember that at some point I have decided to delete a big Thuderbird file which was a lot more over 1GB, as I lacked sufficient free space. I guess that was my biggest mistake, because prior to that deletion I didn't check if the emails were still left on the Yahoo servers. That being said, I guess it isn't much more to do and everything is lost. But in a way, I am pretty curious how the messages from the Sent folder were saved. Now you are saying that if by mistake I find a backup image of my hard drive that include that big Thunderbird file which I have deleted, I might be able to access some of the old emails? It would still be a very small hope left... :)

I am coming back, I forgot to answer one of your questions. Well, I don't usually use Thunderbird. Last days, when I realized the older mails from Yahoo are gone, I re-installed it with the hope that I might have access to them somehow. But Thunderbird stopped at the same date the webmail showed: 16.12.2013. So I un-installed it again. Now as I said, the only hope is maybe finding an old backup of the drive in the period when I was using Thunderbird. Which is almost a lost cause, because I just used Thunderbird for a very short period of time, I even forgot when I have deleted that big Thunderbird file and, more than this, I used to backup my drives very rarely. So not many chances for me to find that big file again. My only disappointment related to Thunderbird in this case is: why did it delete the emails from Yahoo servers without any warning? I mean, at least a popup window asking me: are you sure you want all your mail to be transferred to the computer and deleted from original servers? I would have said no, no, no! Deleting that big file, I had no idea there were my-emails in there. Or couldn't imagine they were gone from Yahoo too.

Do yourself a favor and learn the difference between POP and IMAP email. Then you will know how each protocol words and interacts with email clients like Thunderbird. A little knowledge of how things work help prevent surprise results.

Airmail said

Do yourself a favor and learn the difference between POP and IMAP email. Then you will know how each protocol words and interacts with email clients like Thunderbird. A little knowledge of how things work help prevent surprise results.

In this case, if I would have never used Thunderbird, it would have been better, since all my mail would have been okay on Yahoo servers. The learning thing is for the future: deleted mails won't be coming back. It was better for TB to leave the messages alone. I had it some years ago and it didn't happen like that. Still on default settings. It's kind of stupid to download everything on a computer rather than keeping everything 'in cloud'.

Hi guys, still me. I have found on a backup external drive a path to a POP mail account in Yahoo, under Thunderbird Profiles, which has an Inbox file of about 1 GB. Is there a possibility that some of my old emails to be retrieved in that file?

Thanks again!

Use this add-on:

https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

to import your mail stores.