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Archiving to Local Folder not working

Lester Arbusto
Lester Arbusto
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Hello. I want to archive my older e-mails to a Local Folder that I created. I set up Archiving to archive to an "Archive" subfolder on Local Folders. But when I select e-mails and try to archive them by right-clicking and choosing "Archive," they don't appear in the folder I created. A subfolder is created with the year of the e-mails as its name, but there's nothing in it. If I look at its Properties, it shows 0 messages. I also tried selecting e-mails and copying them to the local folder, but that doesn't work either. I get the same result. I also tried repairing the folders and closing and re-opening TBird, but no help.

My Thunderbird version is 68.12.1 64 bit, running on Windows 7 x64. Any help would be appreciated. I can provide any info that might be needed.

TIA Les

Hello. I want to archive my older e-mails to a Local Folder that I created. I set up Archiving to archive to an "Archive" subfolder on Local Folders. But when I select e-mails and try to archive them by right-clicking and choosing "Archive," they don't appear in the folder I created. A subfolder is created with the year of the e-mails as its name, but there's nothing in it. If I look at its Properties, it shows 0 messages. I also tried selecting e-mails and copying them to the local folder, but that doesn't work either. I get the same result. I also tried repairing the folders and closing and re-opening TBird, but no help. My Thunderbird version is 68.12.1 64 bit, running on Windows 7 x64. Any help would be appreciated. I can provide any info that might be needed. TIA Les

Chosen solution

SOLVED. In fact what was happening is that when I created the "Archive' subfolder under Local Folders, it was set up by default to delete all old messages. So when I moved messages to the new folder, they all got deleted.

The folder's properties say that it is set up with the same settings as the account, and Local Folders (which seems to be considered an "account") must have been set up to delete older messages.

    • So, when setting up a Local Folder for archiving messages from an IMAP account, before creating your archive folder, be sure to go into your Local Folders settings and make sure the default is to keep all messages. Otherwise all the messages you try to archive could get deleted.**
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Lester Arbusto
Lester Arbusto Question owner
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Chosen Solution

SOLVED. In fact what was happening is that when I created the "Archive' subfolder under Local Folders, it was set up by default to delete all old messages. So when I moved messages to the new folder, they all got deleted.

The folder's properties say that it is set up with the same settings as the account, and Local Folders (which seems to be considered an "account") must have been set up to delete older messages.

    • So, when setting up a Local Folder for archiving messages from an IMAP account, before creating your archive folder, be sure to go into your Local Folders settings and make sure the default is to keep all messages. Otherwise all the messages you try to archive could get deleted.**

Modified by Lester Arbusto

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