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I need to download every e-mail from my mail server, please help

  • 8 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by Matt

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I am using the most recent version of thunderbird , I had it set to retrieve only 200 e-mails maximum. But now I want to retrieve every single e-mail, read or unread and bring a copy to my third on my PC. I do not want to delete them from the server. Please help! Thanks in advance.

I am using the most recent version of thunderbird , I had it set to retrieve only 200 e-mails maximum. But now I want to retrieve every single e-mail, read or unread and bring a copy to my third on my PC. I do not want to delete them from the server. Please help! Thanks in advance.

All Replies (8)

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IMAP or POP mail account?

How do you set Thunderbird to only retrieve 200 mails?

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it is a pop

I meant to say that under disk space I chose the "delete all but the most 200 recent e-mails"

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ok, pop only downloads the content of an inbox. no other folders ever. IMAP is the protocol that gets multiple folders.

So to get everything your inbox on the server contains. First turn off the delete everything but the last 200. Then from the help menu select trouibleshooting information Select the show folder button for the profile. Close Thunderbird Open the mail folder in the copy of windows explorer that opened and then the folder for your mail server. delete the file popstate.dat restart Thunderbird and it will download everything the server contains.

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The option you selected states Delete messages including the originals on the remote server. I am not sure where you think you are going to download them from.

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How come I get two completely different. conflicting answers from the same forum? Don't get me wrong I really appreciate the help but ......?

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I am just pointing out that if you delete your mail from the server as the option you selected does, there is no place to download them from. Pretty simple really. Matt's answer says to download everything from your Inbox do the following. If you delete everything from the server except the last 200 messages, you only have the last 200 messages to download. Matt would have to explain his theory.

Modified by user01229325

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Ok, great thanks. I understand now. Luckily, I have one computer setup with thunderbird on which I downloaded ALL the e-mails from the beginning, on that server, that I need. Is there a way to transfer a copy of all those e-mails to another computer? (other than forwarding them )

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Matt said

restart Thunderbird and it will download everything the server contains.

I am glad you see the answers are not exclusive. Both are correct.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/ Using the import export tools add-on ask the least in terms of technical skill.

Instructions to install an add-on: http://chrisramsden.vfast.co.uk/3_How_to_install_Add-ons_in_Thunderbird.html