Save old mail of late account

As I understand it, you no longer have access to the old email account. You could attempt to reinstate the account,, but even if you did, that wouldn't guarantee that the messages are still there. That is, the email provider may have closed the account and reclaimed the server space. Regardless, I would attempt to contact the email provider for the old account. Or am I missing something?

Hi there, an old account is still in Thunderbird. (Tb tries to access the server but that is denied, because the account does not exists anymore there). Since a number of emails still have valuable information I cannot delete the account from Tb, because I assume that a removal of the account, also will remove all the emails. My question is: is there a method of saving emails (e.g. email folder) of an old account. After having done that I can delete the account. Or another question: how to make an account inactive in Tb (not trying the access the imap server). Thanks for your advice. Paul

Here is my suggestion:

install the importexporttools addon if not already done - highlight a folder in inactive account, rightclick, select importexport option to export mbox and save to a temporary windows folder - then, highlight Local Folders, rightclick, and select the importexport option to import mbox file - repeat for all desired folders - check that content is there. once satisfied, remove the old account

(You could also do this in windows file explorer by copying the message folders from the mail\<account> folder or imapmail\<account> folder and store in the Mail\Local Folders folder - but if uncomfortable with that, the importexport approach makes it easy and all done within thunderbird.)

You cannot make accounts inactive, whether POP or IMAP.

You are most welcome. :)