Golda is only he index to your mail used by the global search. It may be a huge file, but it is not your mail.

I had a go at describing offline storage here. http://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com.au/p/blog-page.html

In order for us to better investigate this issue you need to add a little more non-personal information.

Please add the troubleshooting information to your post To find the Troubleshooting information:

• Open Help (or click on three-line-icon and select Help)
• Choose Troubleshooting Information
• Use the button Copy to clipboard to select all. Do not check box "Include account names"!
• Paste this in your post.

Please also add the result of these troubleshooting steps to your post

• Does Thunderbird work in TB Safe mode (see Thunderbird Safe Mode)?
• Do you use anti-virus and firewall software? What is the version?
• Who is the email provider?

Here is Troubleshooting info:

 Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 45.2.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.2.0
   Profile Folder: Show in Finder
   Application Build ID: 20160630070546
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (pop3) mail.musicunbound.com:110, plain, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.musicunbound.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
     OUTGOING: , mail.musicunbound.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, false
     OUTGOING: , mail.musicunbound.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, false
     OUTGOING: , mail.musicunbound.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, false
     OUTGOING: , mail.musicunbound.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, false

   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

 Crash Reports

 Extensions
   Lightning, 4.7.2, false, {e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}

 Important Modified Preferences

   Name: Value

     browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.filesystem_reported: 1
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
     extensions.lastAppVersion: 45.2.0
     gfx.blacklist.direct2d: 3
     mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
     mail.spotlight.firstRunDone: true
     mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: f419a63e-af19-694e-a700-8b97995ff11
     network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
     network.predictor.cleaned-up: true
     places.database.lastMaintenance: 1473139470
     places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858
     plugin.importedState: true

 Graphics

     Vendor ID: 0x8086
     Device ID: 0x0d26
     WebGL Renderer: Intel Inc. -- Intel Iris Pro OpenGL Engine -- 2.1 INTEL-10.14.66
     GPU Accelerated Windows: 0

     AzureCanvasBackend: skia
     AzureSkiaAccelerated: 1
     AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: none
     AzureContentBackend: quartz

 JavaScript

 Incremental GC: 1

 Accessibility

   Activated: 0
   Prevent Accessibility: 0

 Library Versions

     Expected minimum version
     Version in use

     NSPR
     4.12
     4.12

     NSS
     3.21.1 Basic ECC
     3.21.1 Basic ECC

     NSS Util
     3.21.1
     3.21.1

     NSS SSL
     3.21.1 Basic ECC
     3.21.1 Basic ECC

     NSS S/MIME
     3.21.1 Basic ECC
     3.21.1 Basic ECC

Also:

• TB does not work in safe mode (I haven't added any add-ons)

• I use Avast, 11.17 (46792)

• Email is a private hosting service (Dreamhost)

This was working fine for three weeks, with very minor glitches that seemed due to Eudora archive conversion. I'm wondering if there may be a malformed email on the server that is glitching up the download, and perhaps I could just delete that message and it might work. But I don't know how to test that.

What does the error about the Frame Manager refer to??

Thanks for helping with this.

One more thing:

TB was able to download *some* messages yesterday before it stopped (and since it was interrupted, I assume, it thankfully did not delete messages from the server). I have some of the messages downloaded and also still on the server. I don't know exactly which ones without tracing them one by one, because I have a lot of filters to send them to various archive folders as they come in. But I should be able to identify the first message not transferred and examine that on my web interface (IMAP).

!!!!!! Never mind, sorry...

I traced the offending message, and it has a 14MB MP3 file attached, and I'm using 1mbps DSL...

Now I need to figure out if TB can skip downloads that are above a size threshold...

Two options.

1. Right click the account in the folder pane and select settings in the Disk space entry set up a size of message to be skipped. That will sort of future proof things.

2. Log into the web interface and move the offending message to a folder other than the inbox. As POP only downloads the inbox the message will effectively be skipped. Works only on a per message basis.

I do recall just how infuriating folk sending huge messages was then I was on dial up.

Yes, #2 is what I did to get around it in the short term once I figured out the problem.

1. 1 is *very* helpful thanks! I couldn't find that in the help -- that's precisely what I was looking for, does the same thing as the feature I used in Eudora.

I live in the boonies, for another 3 weeks -- after that I get broadband and it will be less of an issue. But I may still use the function, if only at a larger file size setting.