Mailwasher reads directly from the server and deletes at the server. If your account is IMAP (which also works at the server level0, then the message also disappears from your inbox. The only way to force messages to the PC is to use a POP account. Then, when you check for messages, they are downloaded and (if default set) are removed from server. The IMAP issue is not unique to Thunderbird, it is how IMAP was designed to work. Synchronization is based on the server, not the PC. From your post, it appears you use IMAP.

I'm not sure I agree, although you clearly seem to know more about the subject than me. When i started using multiple platforms to read my emails (phone, PC, etc.) I had to change email accounts to IMAP from POP because I wanted the emails to remain on the server after being read by an email client so that another email client on another platform could subsequently read it. POP, as you say, removes the email from the server when it is read by any client so was not suitable when I wanted to read from multiple clients. It also meant that emails in my joint account with my wife could be read by both of us. Since that change I have successfully been using Windows Live Mail with all emails being stored locally automatically. The migration to Thunderbird was done because of some issues I was having with Live Mail. My wife has been using Thunderbird for some years and her emails are not deleted from Thunderbird when they are deleted from the server using Mailwasher. I guess my next step is to compare setup settings on our two computers.

My abject apologies, David. I see that my wife's accounts are set up as POP3 as were my old Live Mail ones. So something happened in the migration process. I'm now more confused than ever because how can a POP3 email be accessed by multiple clients without it being removed from the server? Obviously there's more to this than meets the eye! Many thanks for your help, David. I'll persevere, hope it works and not try to understand it necessarily.

It is possible to set a POP account to leave messages on the server. I don't recommend that, as the server eventually becomes full, but some people find it useful. However, should the account ever become corrupted, Thunderbird won't know what has and hasn't been downloaded, so it downloads everything. If you decide to switch her account to IMAP, you need to create a new account alongside the POP account before deleting the POP account. That is, you cannot 'change a POP account to an IMAP account.

Thanks David. I've just discovered that I have to set up a second account to change an existing one from IMAP to POP. I think that's working. I've just deleted your email from rthe server using Mailwasher and it has gone from the IMAP account and is still there in the new POP account. So many, many thanks for your help and patience. Really appreciated, David.

Mike Smith