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Backing Up Email Labels and Inbox

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by sfhowes

eadent3
eadent3
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Hi all,

Recently, I backed up a very large number of emails from my gmail account into Thunderbird's local files using .mbox files and importexporttools. In the import process, I ended up with all of my labels, my inbox, and my sent mail. I am looking to save some space and delete my inbox and sent mail folders. However, I want to make sure that any emails that happen to be in both my inbox/sent and also one of my labels won't be deleted from my labels if I delete my inbox and sent mail. Thanks in advance for any help or advise you might have!

Hi all, Recently, I backed up a very large number of emails from my gmail account into Thunderbird's local files using .mbox files and importexporttools. In the import process, I ended up with all of my labels, my inbox, and my sent mail. I am looking to save some space and delete my inbox and sent mail folders. However, I want to make sure that any emails that happen to be in both my inbox/sent and also one of my labels won't be deleted from my labels if I delete my inbox and sent mail. Thanks in advance for any help or advise you might have!

All Replies (1)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Because gmail keeps only one copy of a message, the option for deleting should be 'Just mark it as deleted' in Account Settings, Server Settings.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en#zippy=%2Cthunderbird

Before you do any mass deletions, test with a few messages to make sure you're doing what is expected by gmail.

https://support.google.com/mail/thread/4933937/deleted-mails-are-still-in-all-mails-and-important-and-under-default-labels-like-updates?hl=en