i have followed various instruction offered online, but most seemed from older versions of T bird so some settings weren't present.

Many Thanks

Please post a link to the help you found. Then someone can interpret the instructions for you.

I'm not sure what they'd suggest. Email through IMAP is pretty much an "always on" system, and the server can push messages to the client, so the client isn't able to control when new material appears.

With POP you could set it to download at start and then never again, which might suit you.

But we don't know if you have POP or IMAP nor whether changing to POP would break something else you want to do.

I have made no changes to the original setting as the instructions if found online were set to a previous version of T bird so they don't apply now.

Tbird is set up as IMAP

In account settings / synchronization and storage, there is no setting that allows me to set up as I am trying to.

I want to download message from gmail, plain and simple. Once they are on my pc in T Bird, I want the inbox and and other folders to operate independently of gmail. I want T bird to just get new messages from gmail, that's it!

Put like that, I think you need POP.

Ok! Now we're talking!

How do I achieve that!??!!

Many many thanks!!

D

You select POP when you create the mail account. So delete the one you have in Thunderbird and start again.