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when importing email from other accounts, do the emails remain in the original inbox?

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  • Last reply by Zenos

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1. when importing email from other accounts, do the emails remain in the original inbox at the gmail etc site? 2. if remaining in the original inbox, will they be shown as "read"?

1. when importing email from other accounts, do the emails remain in the original inbox at the gmail etc site? 2. if remaining in the original inbox, will they be shown as "read"?

Chosen solution

1. That depends on what you mean by "import".

If the account uses IMAP, Thunderbird will show you what's on the server. There's no need to "import" anything.

POP is rather different. It will by default move all messages from the server down to Thunderbird and then delete them from the server. If you don't want this to happen, start Thunderbird offline and set "Leave a copy of message on server" in the account settings in Thunderbird.

2. I don't know for sure how the read/unread status is managed, but some experiments here show that Thunderbird keeps synched with the read status on the server. I would expect your read messages to be shown as "read", as making a message "read" on the server is being reflected as "read" also in Thunderbird.

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Chosen Solution

1. That depends on what you mean by "import".

If the account uses IMAP, Thunderbird will show you what's on the server. There's no need to "import" anything.

POP is rather different. It will by default move all messages from the server down to Thunderbird and then delete them from the server. If you don't want this to happen, start Thunderbird offline and set "Leave a copy of message on server" in the account settings in Thunderbird.

2. I don't know for sure how the read/unread status is managed, but some experiments here show that Thunderbird keeps synched with the read status on the server. I would expect your read messages to be shown as "read", as making a message "read" on the server is being reflected as "read" also in Thunderbird.