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Thunderbird loses emails from Gmail.

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by ambertony

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Intermittently, Thunderbird does not download emails from Gmail. If I go to webmail, I can forward the email to myself, on the same email address, without any problem. Before realising this was happening, I missed emails that were time critical. I have set the Gmail and Thunderbird to POP3 so that I can manage the messages in Thunderbird better. They are difficult to merge with IMAP, or move to other files, if you have multiple addresses in any of the email clients. I did wonder whether, if my iPad "looks" at the emails first, this might be a problem, but it certainly does not happen the other way round. And it is Thunderbird which is in charge of deletions of the mail on the website.

Intermittently, Thunderbird does not download emails from Gmail. If I go to webmail, I can forward the email to myself, on the same email address, without any problem. Before realising this was happening, I missed emails that were time critical. I have set the Gmail and Thunderbird to POP3 so that I can manage the messages in Thunderbird better. They are difficult to merge with IMAP, or move to other files, if you have multiple addresses in any of the email clients. I did wonder whether, if my iPad "looks" at the emails first, this might be a problem, but it certainly does not happen the other way round. And it is Thunderbird which is in charge of deletions of the mail on the website.

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re : I did wonder whether, if my iPad "looks" at the emails first, this might be a problem, Yes.

Gmail acts a bit different - are we surprised :) Usually any pop mail account will need to set it's account setings to 'leave message on server' so that any other pop mail account to same email address can also download same email. You can also use the server as a form of backup for more recent emails.

Gmail will only allow an email to be pop downloaded once unless you change your settings. Please read all the variations because it depends upon what you need to achieve. The 'recent' will get access to recent mail 30 days and other settings get access to last 250 messages. Read info at link - headings: 'How does normal mode work?' 'How does recent mode work?' 'Re-downloading messages and excluding existing messages'

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Chosen Solution

re : I did wonder whether, if my iPad "looks" at the emails first, this might be a problem, Yes.

Gmail acts a bit different - are we surprised :) Usually any pop mail account will need to set it's account setings to 'leave message on server' so that any other pop mail account to same email address can also download same email. You can also use the server as a form of backup for more recent emails.

Gmail will only allow an email to be pop downloaded once unless you change your settings. Please read all the variations because it depends upon what you need to achieve. The 'recent' will get access to recent mail 30 days and other settings get access to last 250 messages. Read info at link - headings: 'How does normal mode work?' 'How does recent mode work?' 'Re-downloading messages and excluding existing messages'

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Thank you for that thorough response. It makes a lot of sense, even if Gmail's procedures don't! I have recently switched to make Gmail my main email account, hence the concern. At least I now understand what is going on.