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How to setup gmail IMAP accounts on an "online only" basis in thunderbird (eg. dont download emails locally)

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  • Last reply by david

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Ive got 20 Google workplace email accounts (essentially business gmail accounts). The email accounts all vary in size, but i would say the average account size is c. 5GB.

I want to search for emails sent to / from a particular 3rd party accounts, across all 20 email accounts.

Is there a way i can setup these accounts in thunderbird, but do an "online only" account setup so that all 5GB for each of the 20 accounts isnt downloaded, but rather the account setup in thunderbird would only reference the data on the server and allow me to remotely search the server for each account without downloading the email accounts each in full ?

Ive got 20 Google workplace email accounts (essentially business gmail accounts). The email accounts all vary in size, but i would say the average account size is c. 5GB. I want to search for emails sent to / from a particular 3rd party accounts, across all 20 email accounts. Is there a way i can setup these accounts in thunderbird, but do an "online only" account setup so that all 5GB for each of the 20 accounts isnt downloaded, but rather the account setup in thunderbird would only reference the data on the server and allow me to remotely search the server for each account without downloading the email accounts each in full ?

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Well, some downloads will likely occur during your work, but in the syncronizations@settings area, you can untick message syncronizing and click the advanced tab and untick folders for offline use, and you could set the 'Don't download messages larger than' to 1k. That's no guarantee, but should minimize downloads.

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david said

Well, some downloads will likely occur during your work, but in the syncronizations@settings area, you can untick message syncronizing and click the advanced tab and untick folders for offline use, and you could set the 'Don't download messages larger than' to 1k. That's no guarantee, but should minimize downloads.

Thanks, when I would then do a search would it search the server or only the part downloaded local emails ?

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Well, TB has to download the messages in order to do a search. I encourage some experimenting to see the extent to which data is downloaded and retained.