http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_(Thunderbird)

Hi Stans, many thanks for the http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_(Thunderbird) link. The 'Accounts' [number of] section does not appear to solve my problem. My click on 'Get all messages' leaves out several of my 62 accounts and I have to go down the list clicking on 'Get Messages' for each one, to be sure I have got them all.

Does it make any difference that I have most of them set up for POP and only a few for IMAP? Another point is that some accounts always ask for me to enter their passwords in a pop-up box and others don't. My accounts are spread over Yahoo, GMX, AOL, Gmail, and Hotmail/Live/Outlook, but there seems to be no consistency in which of these needs to be checked individually or asks for the password.

Any further thoughts much appreciated!

Does it work if you use the keyboard Shift+F5 shortcut instead of the mouse?

How do you know it does not check all accounts?

Hi Matt, thanks. Shift+F5 doesn't do anything. I know that it is not looking at all the accounts because, after it has finished whizzing through the list it stops and some are highlighted as having received messages. If I then go down through the list and check messages for each account individually, more of them receive messages that were missed by the first sweep through with 'Get All Messages'. This is quite tedious but seems to be the only way I can be sure of getting all of them.

When going through them manually, a 'Please Enter Passsword' pop-up box comes up for some of them, which also suggests (proves?) that the 'Get All Messages' feature is not working properly. They do all work individually - after entering the password if necessary - which I presume means that the setup details for each account is ok.

All very perplexing!!

Oh, Earlstails, I know EXACTLY what you're talking about and running into. No worries here! (I'm smiling at my desk because I wondered the same thing for a bit, until I finally realized what was happening.)

The problem is that the "Get All Messages" command only works on the accounts for which you have already entered the password for that session. (Storing a password and having it entered by the computer automatically does count.) Once you have entered the passwords for all accounts, then all accounts will be checked by the 'Get All Messages' command!

It's working properly, at least as probably intended. You don't want just anyone walking up and being able to download all your new mail without your passwords. If you did, you'd have Thunderbird remember ALL of them permamently, right? *wink* And if it did work the way I *think* you would like it to, it would run through all accounts and prompt you for the passwords for each account that hadn't gotten its password yet. And there, it's a matter of use cases. That is fine, and good, if you always want to check *all* of your accounts every time -- and that's a valid desire.

Where it would be bad, and annoying, is in a case like this: Say I have, oh, just five accounts (and nothing like your 62, wow!). Hmmm, let's call them ... Personal, SPAM Trap, Old Work, Craig's List, and Current Work. (Doesn't really matter, but it'll help me to describe specifics that you will understand are actually generalities; some you want to check all the time, and some you don't.)

• Personal and Current Work are accounts I want to open and check mail for all the time, because I've always got important/relevant stuff coming into and out of them (but really, for any reason -- I just want to.).
• I don't have any reason to check Craig's List mail when I haven't responded to any ads recently and don't expect any legitimate mail there at the current time.
• Old Work is really just there in case someone from my old job calls me for some information or something, and they won't be reaching out to me through that account because they know I don't check it unless there's a need, or at least not on any regular basis. Maybe I still occasionally have a legitimate reason to send from that account, too. (This is a hypothetical, after all.)
• SPAM Trap is just what I use when I have to give an e-mail address to a company, ordering stuff, signing up for newsletters, signing up for restaurant birthday clubs, whatever; this way, any resulting SPAM doesn't clutter my Personal inbox, and I can always open it to deal with a current order or see if I have an unexpired coupon or offer for my favorite restaurant right before I go out to eat. Point is, I don't have reasons to check it all the time every day.

So now it's Thursday morning, and I fire up Thunderbird, and I enter my passwords for Personal and Current Work, and I hit the Escape key or 'Cancel' buttons for the other three accounts. When I use the 'Get All Messages' command, it only downloads messages for the accounts I've already logged into. ***And It Does Not Bug Me*** about the other three accounts. I might have specific reason not to download messages from one more more of them, or maybe I just don't want to be bothered all day by notifications when mail arrives in those for-now-unimportant accounts, or maybe I don't want to use up metered bandwidth, or maybe something else. But if I don't want mail downloaded from those accounts and *IF* the 'Get All Messages' command *DID* try to check them every time, I'd be bothered by having to cancel the password prompts every time.[1] So "getting all the mail from the accounts I've bothered to log in to" is a good command to have, and I think, the preferable default. The program also lets you decide for each account individually whether to 'check for messages at startup' (which prompts for unsaved passwords) or not. [In fact, I just unticked the checkbox for a couple of my own accounts -- my karmic payment for this help offered, I guess ;-) .] With that option in each account's Server settings, you could check the box for each of your 62 accounts to make sure you're prompted when you start Thunderbird if you want; it *would* spare you from having to manually move down the list to select and get mail for each one!

[1] (How much it happens, and how much of a bother it would be, depends largely on how often you'd use that command, as opposed to setting the 'Check for messages every [_] minutes' setting appropriately for each individual account. I grant that. But the explanation still holds. Especially if you *don't* want an account checked at all, in which case, you wouldn't want to be prompted for its password unnecessarily.)

Of course, I *am* assuming that the only accounts for which it's not getting mail are the ones for which you have not entered any password yet. If you have to enter the correct password *to get* mail more than once, that's actually a problem, though I can't say for certain with what. (Of course, you do have to enter the password the first time you get mail in a session and the first time you send mail in a session.)

When you are getting some account's mail by pressing the button under discussion, I'm presuming that either you have manually entered them already, or that you have Thunderbird remember them always.

I hope this does actually help you :-) . Have a blessed life!

P.S. If you like getting mail for a bunch of accounts all at once with the touch of a button, you might also like an add-on I found earlier in the month: MultiXPunge. It has some more functionality, but I just use it to compact all folders & sub-folders for all accounts with the touch of a button. Fantastic! (I was never certain if the 'Compact' button on the toolbar invoked the 'File|Compact Folders' command or another hidden one that does not compact sub-folders; I'm still not, even after trying to watch displayed results. So I always had to use two clicks per account to compact everything. Now it's one click, total! Yay

Hello CV. Thank you so much for your magnificent and engaging reply to my query. Apologies for the delay in my reply -- I have only just remembered to get my 'earls.tails' emails manually, instead of waiting for them to show up automatically!

Your answers are so comprehensive that I have not yet implemented all of your most helpful suggestions, but I am convinced that using one of more of the techniques will produce complete resolution of my issues.

So far, I am working through my 62 accounts to check the passwords and to group them into 'Business' and Friends & Family' etc, as you recommend. I can then choose which to download in any session and also decide which of them to set for 'Check for new messages at startup'. I will have a look at the MultiXPunge add-on you mentioned as well.

I like your idea of Karmic Payment or Reward :-) because one separate gain I have now made is to take the long-overdue decision to delete some of my little-used accounts: an essential act I assure you, as (even though they are like children to me) some of them are cute but an unnecessary burden -- I have to play with them everyday to keep them happy!! :-D

So, heartfelt grateful thanks for taking the time to cover the topic in such a thorough manner. With best wishes and blessings to you too.

Bonne chance mon ami...

You mention some accounts ask for password, so I would assume those accounts do not have a stored password in Thunderbird.

Set up each account for Password Manager' to store the passwords. When prompted for password, enter password and check the checkbox for password manager to remember the password, then click on Ok.

Check to see what passwords are stored for your accounts:

• 'Menu app icon' > 'Options' > 'Options' > 'Security' > Passwords ' tab
• click on 'Saved Passwords'
• Click on 'Show Passwords'

Suggest you clear the 'Activity Manager'

• Menu app icon > Activity Manager
• click on 'Clear List'

When all ok, restart Thunderbird. Test: Allow some time for accounts to get checked. Be sure not to interupt any process by selecting various folders etc as you want to see what is being perform automatically by viewing info in 'Activity Manager'

Open the 'Activity Manager' window to see what is being checked etc.