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Gmail account backup via thunderbird : do mails with multiple labels get copied several times?

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  • Last reply by christ1

Jeffery25
Jeffery25
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Hi!

This might be a silly question. But here goes:

1) I hear emails from my gmail account don't get duplicated if they have several labels (they simply appear in the relevant folders) 2) I backed up my gmail account by using the "copy folder" add-on and copying the folders corresponding to my labels to a a place in "local folders." I couldn't copy in one go because the size was too big and the copy would crash, so it was done bit by bit. => Will the emails with several labels remain unique in this backup? Or does the fact that I separately copied several folders containing the same email make it possible that there are several separate copies of it in local folders?

(For that matter: is there a better way of making a backup of my gmail account via thunderbird? This method I used was nasty and time consuming)

Hi! This might be a silly question. But here goes: 1) I hear emails from my gmail account don't get duplicated if they have several labels (they simply appear in the relevant folders) 2) I backed up my gmail account by using the "copy folder" add-on and copying the folders corresponding to my labels to a a place in "local folders." I couldn't copy in one go because the size was too big and the copy would crash, so it was done bit by bit. => Will the emails with several labels remain unique in this backup? Or does the fact that I separately copied several folders containing the same email make it possible that there are several separate copies of it in local folders? (For that matter: is there a better way of making a backup of my gmail account via thunderbird? This method I used was nasty and time consuming)

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christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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I suppose your account is IMAP.

I hear emails from my gmail account don't get duplicated if they have several labels (they simply appear in the relevant folders)

Emails should not be duplicated if you're subscribed to 'All Mail'. For other labels I don't know. Then I don't see a need to be subscribed to 'All Mail' in the first place.

is there a better way of making a backup of my gmail account via thunderbird?

Turn on synchronization for the folders you'd like to backup. That downloads an offline copy of the messages to your disk. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/imap-synchronization

Then backup the entire Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile