It depends on what you mean by local folders. Move the mail you want to keep into folders under the special account named Local Folders. The Local Folders account is on your local drive and out of the control of your provider. They will not disappear when you remove the old POP account.

Thank you for your reply. I do have lots of folders and emails under the "Local Folders" special account and was worried they might disappear when I deleted my POP account. I am still concerned about the differences between what Comcast tells me how to create the new IMAP account and how Thunderbird help says how to do it. I was hoping someone else has already gone through this change. I hesitate to try and list those differences here, but I will if you need me to.

Your local folders will not disappear, but what is the basis of your assertion that POP is going away?

The only change I am aware of is the need to update the port number from 110 to 995, but that is a very long way from withdrawing support for POP. (If you do have port 110 set, you will probably also need to change the connection security to SSL/TLS from None) See https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/update-pop3-110-995

This discussion from last April would indicate that there is confusion about what is actually happening. https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Email-Web-Browsing/change-from-pop-to-imap/td-p/3125786

xfinity documentation here also suggests POP is not going away, it just list IMAP first because they want your mail on their servers. Just another reason to make moving difficult. https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/email-client-programs-with-xfinity-email

I am a Comcast customer. I have both POP and IMAP working on the same Comcast email address. Nothing blew up or disappeared. I did not do anything special. I just created a new setup in Thunderbird with the IMAP settings and named it something different than what I named the POP account. I have always made it a practice to move any email I want to keep into folders under the Local Folders account and I make backups. But I am very aware that email is not reliable, permanent storage. Maybe I am alone from the stories on this forum about people losing their tax records or their un-replacable photos that have no backup. I guess they were not really that important.

For my setup to work I did have to set the POP account to leave messages on the server until I delete them. Since IMAP is server based when I delete a message in the POP account it also is removed from IMAP. If I delete a message using the IMAP setup it does not affect the POP since those messages are downloaded to my local drive. The only reason I go through this is for testing and answering questions on this forum. There is no practical reason to do this.

Thank you Matt and Airmail for the info. To Matt - I had already updated my POP account to the new port with no issues. As for the push by Xfinity to move to IMAP - I have gotten emails from them that they really want folks to move to IMAP. I also have a friend who does lots of computer setups and help and he has run into the fact that he can no longer set up new POP accounts for his customers on Xfinity. To Airmail - I like what you have done. I also have always moved my keeper emails into folders in the "Local Folders" account and I do make backups of my drives. Do you have a special way to just backup you emails? I feel better now about making this change.

There have been reported issues for those using Linux OS, but they can still operate a pop or imap mail account but just need to use a different server eg: imap.ge.xfinity.com Strangely this works ok for both pop and imap.

Plenty of chit chat on xfinity forums. https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Email-Web-Browsing/Update-Your-Xfinity-Email-POP-Port-Settings/td-p/3150810/page/2

In a few cases settings in Config Editor for line:

• network.dns.disableIPv6

needed to be set to 'true'.

Thank you Toad-Hall. I am running Windows 10 currently but nice to know about the Linux settings as I have run Linux in the past and you never know when I might get mad at Microsoft. I will check out the forums you mention. Dave

You might want to tell your tech friend to disable Norton's SONAR and possibly all of Norton's when trying to set up accounts. Given it is sold with xfinity it is more than likely the product in use on the device. Norton's is a pig to work around with the account wizard, any difficulties are more likely the anti virus than either Thunderbird or xfinity.

Thanks Matt, I will pass on your suggestion.