how to pickup a specific period of emails from server
I was using OE6 as client. It crashed on inbox.dbx >2GB. Set up Thunderbird, but it also failed to import the inbox file. I used an older backup of the email files; about 2 months old. TB sucessfully imported this inbox and all other files. The connection to server GMAIL was successful, emails came in from the date of the TB installation forward, however I'm missing the 2 months of emails. Is there anyway to get TB to import, or update it's active inbox with emails going back to the date of my backup file, to fill in the lost emails?
Chosen solution
OE put everything into one big file so hit the max file size limit quite easily.
Thunderbird creates a file per folder, so straight away, your Inbox, Sent, Trash etc are being split into separate files. Better yet, if you have organized your stored messages into separate folders, they too will be represented by individual folders. So you can store a whole lot more data before hitting some 2GB or 4GB file size limit.
However since it seems that you hadn't split up your Inbox, given your passing mention of labels, maybe the maildir storage structure would suit your case better. It isn't formally sanctioned, but I've been using it on two or three accounts without mishap. And once you had downloaded your stuff you could shift it to alternative storage using mbox if you are uneasy about using the experimental maildir format.
However you do it, shifting 6GB over an email protocol is going to be slow and painful. Email likes "little and often" and is not suited to large monolithic data transfers. Anything you can do to split it into multiple smaller tranches will be to your advantage.
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You can delete everything in Thunderbird and change the gmail setting on their site to allow download of all mail, even already downloaded mail.
I'm guessing that due to the volume of emails (over 6 GB) it would overload and crash TB unless it automatically creates additional files as they reach their size limit. Or does TB not also have an ultimate file size limitation like OE? I guess that I could split up the Gmail inbox into smaller folders (labels in Gmail lingo) and only put what I want in the Gmail inbox and then DL it to TB. I thought that there might be a more direct way to do it. Maybe not....
Chosen Solution
OE put everything into one big file so hit the max file size limit quite easily.
Thunderbird creates a file per folder, so straight away, your Inbox, Sent, Trash etc are being split into separate files. Better yet, if you have organized your stored messages into separate folders, they too will be represented by individual folders. So you can store a whole lot more data before hitting some 2GB or 4GB file size limit.
However since it seems that you hadn't split up your Inbox, given your passing mention of labels, maybe the maildir storage structure would suit your case better. It isn't formally sanctioned, but I've been using it on two or three accounts without mishap. And once you had downloaded your stuff you could shift it to alternative storage using mbox if you are uneasy about using the experimental maildir format.
However you do it, shifting 6GB over an email protocol is going to be slow and painful. Email likes "little and often" and is not suited to large monolithic data transfers. Anything you can do to split it into multiple smaller tranches will be to your advantage.