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I changed from IMAP to POP on an existing account and need all emails from my subfolders to download to Thunderbird. Is there a way to do this?

michelle.topperfloats
michelle.topperfloats
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Let me start off with this: I've only been using Thunderbird for about 3 months so I'm already lacking in training. Having said that, my office-mate's predecessor set up her email account as IMAP and the company prefers POP. The server side is full and she can't receive emails. I checked the forums, backup up her profile using Mozback (just in case), deleted the email accounts and then added back fresh the ones I want to keep. Now-only the emails in her inbox (on the I/O Com server online) have downloaded to Thunderbird. There are subfolders in the inbox but none of those or the contents of them will download, as well as her "sent" emails and such. Is there a way to get everything to download to TBird? Is there maybe a way to restore her old profile and keep all the emails but NOT the IMAP setup?

Sincerely, The New Girl

Let me start off with this: I've only been using Thunderbird for about 3 months so I'm already lacking in training. Having said that, my office-mate's predecessor set up her email account as IMAP and the company prefers POP. The server side is full and she can't receive emails. I checked the forums, backup up her profile using Mozback (just in case), deleted the email accounts and then added back fresh the ones I want to keep. Now-only the emails in her inbox (on the I/O Com server online) have downloaded to Thunderbird. There are subfolders in the inbox but none of those or the contents of them will download, as well as her "sent" emails and such. Is there a way to get everything to download to TBird? Is there maybe a way to restore her old profile and keep all the emails but NOT the IMAP setup? Sincerely, The New Girl

Chosen solution

POP only downloads the Inbox, so to download Sent and the other folders, delete the POP accounts (after copying any existing mail you need to Local Folders), add the accounts as IMAP, then after all folders have synchronized, copy the mail to subfolders of Local Folders. Once you've confirmed everything you want is in Local Folders, you can remove the accounts and re-add them as POP.

Another approach might be to find the mail folders (mbox files) in the MozBackup file (it's just a zip file of the old profile folder; change its extension to ,zip and extract) and copy them into the Local Folders folder of the existing profile folder - as long as the IMAP account was set up to sync entire messages (the default), not just the headers.

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All Replies (2)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Suluhisho teule

POP only downloads the Inbox, so to download Sent and the other folders, delete the POP accounts (after copying any existing mail you need to Local Folders), add the accounts as IMAP, then after all folders have synchronized, copy the mail to subfolders of Local Folders. Once you've confirmed everything you want is in Local Folders, you can remove the accounts and re-add them as POP.

Another approach might be to find the mail folders (mbox files) in the MozBackup file (it's just a zip file of the old profile folder; change its extension to ,zip and extract) and copy them into the Local Folders folder of the existing profile folder - as long as the IMAP account was set up to sync entire messages (the default), not just the headers.

Modified by sfhowes

michelle.topperfloats
michelle.topperfloats Mwenye swali
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Thank you very much! It worked perfectly :)