Setting up account from Outlook using IMAP, the imported folders should be 75, however 8 off folder repeatedly fail to to transfer, even on fresh re-installs
I am trying to set up Thunderbird in favour of Outlook. On setting up email account, the Outlook 365 IMAP setting are correct, Thunderbird imports my emails inside their folders and sub-folders correctly after syncronisation process is completed. I then discover that 8 folders with emails inside are not imported. Total folders to import is 75 [not including standard ones, inbox, sent, draft etc]. I only get 67. I know which ones they are, as they are still in my Outlook 365 app on PC, on the Outlook website and also on my mobile phone Samsung email app.
I have looked in TB setting and checked all folders for subscribing are ticked,however the 8 folders I am missing are not listed anyway. I have uninstalled TB and purged PC of any TB files or data and made fresh TB download, reinstalled and made Outlook email account setup. After import, same 8 folders are missing.
I have tried to create new folders in TB to import each missing email manually, however TB refuses to add folders with same names as the missing ones e.g. Amazon, into folder list. I can make a new folder with a random name, e.g. Test and it gets created, however you cannot use rename to make Test into Amazon. I hope the above is clear, as this is spoiling my desire to continue use of Thunderbird. Does anyone know why?
All Replies (3)
my "guess is the folder names are not compatible. do they contain punctuation (!@#$%^&*()_+>?":<) or non US Ascii text?
Folks there days have a particular penchant for long names (Windows limits this to 255 characters) , Thunderbird's store location on the hard disk reduces this by around 50 characters on a lot of systems. so if the combined "tree" of folder is long this can cause problems. As Outlook uses an internal single file store there is an inherently shorter total path length supplied for folders in Thunderbird.
Matt thanks for your prompt reply. Unfortunately I don't believe the name length is the issue, as no folder name is close to 50 characters. The missing names don't have punctuation marks either. [Amazon, Barclays, Family, Health, HMRC, Pensions, Pension Adviser ] Folders with longer names have been imported correctly,
I used Outlook 365 for years in my business, I have retired now and don't need such a full on set of programmes like excel & PowerPoint plus associated yearly subscription, hence my quest for a new mail programme.
I have tried setting up in Mail on PC and it imported all folders and functioned OK, except its not a very user friendly mailer. I also tried Gmail and again all folders imported and worked, I am not a fan of Gmail as its browser based, so may as well use Outlook in a browser.
Matt, I am sure the answers out in the cloud somewhere, meantime I will try changing those folder names before importing and also put all their emails into one new folder and try again.
If not I will try sticking with Outlook via browser for awhile longer.
Matt, as per above, I have removed/deleted the 8 failed to load folders from Outlook, put their emails into differently named folders and proceeded to fresh install Thunderbird and set up my Outlook email account. Lo and behold it seems to have worked and TB is working. I am now checking to see how many actual emails are in my original Outlook and then compare to the TB total just be sure I haven't lost any emails elsewhere.
By copying all the emails from the failed 8 folders shows that it wasn't the name of any of those emails,so it had to be a quirk with the folder names themselves, despite them using simple alphabet letters.
What ever the issue this is/was a work around!
Finally, I have TBsync and Exchange Activesync extension installed to sync contacts and calendars and that seems to be working. Will test for a few more days.
Cheers, stay safe. Stuart