Does Thunderbird keep a copy of emails from an IMAP account or is it just a window?
My wife has been using Cox Webmail for years and has about 30 subfolders with stuff she needs to keep. We are finally pulling the plug with cox and so that email will be terminated with them.
My question - If I setup Thunderbird as IMAP does it just point to those emails and folders on the Cox servers, or does Thunderbird actually keep those emails within itself locally? My fear is that I set the Cox account up in Thunderbird and all appears well, I then close the Cox account and then Thunderbird is empty.
I've got forwarding turned on in the Cox account and that works fine, but I see no option within Cox to export all the subfolders.
Appreciate any help!
Thanks,
David
Solution eye eponami
In Files>offline the download/sync option offers a button to confirm all folders to download. After that happens, you should see the full content in each of the subfolders. In my example, I mentioned the inbox, but you were to copy ALL of the downloaded folders. After the download, the folders are right where they were before the download. All you accomplished was ensuring all the content was downloaded.
Tanga eyano oyo ndenge esengeli 👍 0All Replies (6)
TB does NOT keep copies. To ensure you have them all, - in TB, click tools>accountsettings>account>syncronization&storage and click 'advanced' to verify that the folders are set for download. - click File>Offline and download all folders - once done to your satisfaction, exit TB - in file explorer, locate your profile and your Imapmail folder and copy all mail folders (which are usually a set of two, such as INBOX and INBOX.msf) to your Mail/LocalFolders folder, being sure not to overlay any preexisting folders. - restart TB and verify that the folders are now accessible in Local Folders. What you have just done is isolate your mail from the account. The account may now be closed. Be sure to backup your profile as these are your only copies of those messages.
on NEW PC, once your imap account is established, you can either continue to access older messages on your PC or you can upload the folders to the new imap account.
Thanks, I'll check on all that! A little confused on the file explorer part but let me see how far I get.
Thanks!
File Explorer is the component of Windows that lets you see the files on PC. If using windows 10 or 11 you can rightclick on windows icon in task bar and start it.
Went thru the steps but the only thing I'm seeing in local folders now is a duplicate of the inbox. No subfolders.
Can you send me a screenshot of where the inbox and inbox.msf should be after doing the download 'all folders'. I did check and all folders are checked when it asks me what I want to access offline. And then maybe another screenshot of exactly where to copy those files to?
Think we're close!
Thanks,
David
Solution eye oponami
In Files>offline the download/sync option offers a button to confirm all folders to download. After that happens, you should see the full content in each of the subfolders. In my example, I mentioned the inbox, but you were to copy ALL of the downloaded folders. After the download, the folders are right where they were before the download. All you accomplished was ensuring all the content was downloaded.
I think we've got it!
Thanks for all your help; much appreciated!
Enjoy your weekend!
David