Please understand that Thunderbird is but a conduit to your outlook account, a means to manage the account from your PC. So, when you delete from Thunderbird, what is happening is that you are, in fact, deleting from the email account itself.

i found that outlook.com allows to enable POP mail as an option. i will have to look and see if it is only for premium users. I think that I have used an e-mail service that allowed that. I have read that POP mail allows that, so I will find out if I can change to POP servers.

Do you know if once Thunderbird is setup for IMAP, if it can be switched to POP mail?

Would you be able to tell me about whole compacting process? For instance, what is the reason that it does that?

You can have both POP and IMAP, if desired, but you cannot convert one to the other. If you prefer POP, you can set it up alongside the IMAP account. And you can set POP to leave on server. Compacting is helpful because Thunderbird keeps messages in a database. When a message is 'deleted', the space it occupied is still there in the database, but unusable. Periodic compacting removes the unused space to a smaller size.

I suspect that most users still stay with imap in situation that you describe.

I have multiple accounts which I check from both phone and laptop throughout the day. Generally, when I delete something from the laptop I have no further need of it in either location. If I think I will need it later but don't want it in the Inbox, then I move it to a different folder to get it out of the Inbox.

Compact is described https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders

okay thanks for the link. I will delete some e-mails. i just might want to save some of them on my laptop on occasion. My e-mail service has a menu to enable POP mail. It is not for a different e-mail account. I want to see if I can change the settings in the menu of Thunderbird (which seem to only show IMAP options).

I understand that Dave says I cannot convert it, and can only use it alongside, but if my e-mail service says there is an option to enable POP mail, then there must be one. I just need to figure out if I am able to use that option.

With Thunderbird, I need to see if there is a setting in the menu to enter the POP address information.

I probably can keep the outgoing server the same, but Thunderbird does not have an option that is clear to change "IMAP." that is not a field that can be edited. server settings and identities don't show it. Please let me know where POP mail can be setup.

Please follow Wayne's suggestion. Regardless of what your email service says, an account cannot be both IMAP and POP, and you cannot convert one to the other.

well, i did something. i tried to enable it and create the new account copy in thunderbird. However, it made all e-mails on the website marked as read. i did not like that. It not only did that, but when I disabled that, it basically deleted all the downloaded e-mails from the IMAP side. Well, not exactly. I found something odd.

I am not sure if you can help. All the e-mails are downloaded to Thunderbird now from yesterday into a POP folder. However, after disabling it, I have about 40 e-mails in my inbox on the IMAP side. Yesterday, I had a lot more than that on the server. Now, it is like they are deleted from Thunderbird on the IMAP side for the most part in the Inbox. Outlook.com said it would create a different folder. do you know why it also didn't retain e-mail copies that I did not delete in Thunderbird? it looks like they were moved to the POP folder, even though I did not delete them.

Not knowing or having viewed your steps, POP accounts typically delete from server after download. That might explain why you have messages missing on the IMAP account.

that is the case it seems. Yet i noticed that a small percentage is still on the website in my inbox. at the same time, the portion that was downloaded seems to be in some server space that is allocated into some space that is counting as storage in my account. I have to take that up with the service.

Is there a way to also backup the e-mails that I downloaded to my system via POP? Can these be exported in something like MBOX format? i have seen that there is an option before to export e-mails in zip format.

Historically the hotmail servers have been particularly slow in actually implementing deletions from POP accounts. Perhaps Microsoft over subscribe them, I do not know why. But mail has remained in the inbox so long at times I get multiple copies because Thunderbird asks for new mail and gets the old mail again because they have done nothing with it yet.

Changes have, in my experience often taken more than 10 minutes to implement and at times 60 minutes or more. Additionally, unless you change the outlook.com defaults, (See https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/options/mail/accounts) POP deletions will not be honored as such, with deleted mail moved to a sub folder of the web interface Deleted items folder called POP. How this translates to IMAP I have no idea as I use POP for my hotmail accounts.

The reality is that using outlook.com you will see two copies of mail in your sent folder, because Microsoft insist you the consumer wants them to save a copy. To fix this issue you need to disable the copy Thunderbird routinely makes in account settings, because the standards for sending mail don't actually interact with the mail account. Only Microsoft and Google offer this "feature".

You might want to look at the import export tools addon for your external to Thunderbird archival needs. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools-ng/?src=ss

i have that extension, and first i tried to export as a zip file and it was interrupted. then i exported the folders, then the folders and structures, but I get this: the file attached shows dat files, msf files, and files without an extension. i don't know how to open them. i found that menu options are setup to export MBOX files, but i don't see that happening. Are those files something that I can open (that are exported)?

also, Thunderbird wants to keep connecting to the POP account. can i turn off POP through thunderbird, but keep the e-mails there? it is deactivated in my account, but i want to access which was downloaded.

the file attached shows dat files, msf files, and files without an extension. i don't know how to open them. i found that menu options are setup to export MBOX files, but i don't see that happening. Are those files something that I can open (that are exported)?

The image shows a standard Thunderbird profile "folder" content. You are not meant to do anything with them except import and export then to Thunderbird. Although the files without extensions are MBOX files as that is Thunderbird's native storage format.

If you want files in a format your operating system know what to do with, I would suggest export as EML (one file per message). See image.

As for your old pop account, I suggest you move the contents to folders under local folders and once that is done simply remove it. Thunderbird has no option to disable an existing account.

is there a way to view those files and interact with them? i suppose that you are trying to explain that.

I was not intending to download them only to not be able to have them on the server. I did not know it was going to download them and erase them from the server. There may be files that i want to access in some e-mails that are attachments. MBOX seems like a format that would import and export back and forth to Thunderbird to view. If so, how would I do that, and stop the prompt to enter my password for POP mail?

Can I export backups, and not have them as individual e-mails?

Thunderbird is likely just a vehicle to view e-mails from a server, or download them, so that would be normally not something that will show e-mails that are not connected to a server. However, I do not want to keep seeing the prompts to enter my password, and that it had an error. I see that there is an HTML file option with attachments, but I wonder if it is individual files or what?

if i can still store those in Thunderbird, but disconnect the configuration for POP mail, it would be good. At the same time, if you know some way to view what I didn't realize i was erasing from the server, I would appreciate it.

so, i am wondering if somebody can tell me about my last question here?

It was explained an option it seems that i am not sure that I noticed (it included HTML e-mails with attachments). I looked up this option, and it says it can show links to attachments. I don't know where the attachments are stored, and if it is exporting tons of individual e-mails, or how that is done. Please explain.

I don't know, and it will be helpful to conserve space on my hard drive, but still be able to access the exported e-mails. I also found that it is advised that I unlink all my devices (remove my account from Thunderbird and my phone) to remove the ghost e-mails that are saved on outlook.com. Microsoft Support said to do this.

I am hesitant to do this, since I do not want e-mails to automatically delete. The e-mails are not even on my account website, but they are showing there in storage. Their support says it is that way due to a sync issue. However, the POP e-mails are the only existing e-mails that exist as extra space, and they are downloaded. Anyways, please let me know about these, and i can also follow the previous steps about compacting e-mails. I need to be able to access the e-mails that I did not realize would be downloaded and deleted from the website before I had wanted them to be.

following up to see if anyone might have an answer to my last question?

so, i am wondering if somebody can tell me about my last question here? It was explained an option it seems that i am not sure that I noticed (it included HTML e-mails with attachments). I looked up this option, and it says it can show links to attachments. I don't know where the attachments are stored, and if it is exporting tons of individual e-mails, or how that is done. Please explain.

No idea. If you need technical support for the addons, I suggest you utilize the support link on it's download page. One thing I do know, is that none of the export methods are going to save significant amounts of space on your hard drive unless you select export destinations not on your hard drive.

I don't know, and it will be helpful to conserve space on my hard drive, but still be able to access the exported e-mails. I also found that it is advised that I unlink all my devices (remove my account from Thunderbird and my phone) to remove the ghost e-mails that are saved on outlook.com. Microsoft Support said to do this.

I have no idea what that even means.

I am hesitant to do this, since I do not want e-mails to automatically delete. The e-mails are not even on my account website, but they are showing there in storage. Their support says it is that way due to a sync issue.

Again I have no idea what that means.

However, the POP e-mails are the only existing e-mails that exist as extra space, and they are downloaded. Anyways, please let me know about these, and i can also follow the previous steps about compacting e-mails. I need to be able to access the e-mails that I did not realize would be downloaded and deleted from the website before I had wanted them to be.

Do you mean this page?[you mean this page?] It doesn"t say how to make one large file with multiple e_mails.

It just says that it can make large files and individual emails. Please let me know if there is something else. I am wanting to know if there is a way to not export the downloaded e-mails to an external source for viewing that is backed up, and not have several individual e-mails. I do want to know how the HTML emails store the linked attachments, and I've read sometimes those don't work, I believe.

i found the link, but I am wondering about the whole issue with disconnecting thunderbird from my account temporarily. Will that make e-mails become deleted?