Your situation is unclear. Is this an IMAP account? And are the 19 received and 6 sent messages there on the online account? With more detail on what you have and what you want to do, I think some suggestions may come forth. Thank you.

David,Thank you for helping. IMAP -- I don't think so?  I'm not really sure what that is, but I found a ?reference? to it in the Account Settings.  I've attached a screen shot. "franklinccoleman" is my primary account. "fcauthorncoleman" is used exclusively for Amazon.  [I did not mention this before, but I have received no new notifications from Amazon since the upgrade to Windows 11 -- despite my having ordered books from them recently.]  What does it mean that "fcauthorncoleman" is listed twice -- once with and once without "(IMAP)"? Yes, the 19 received and 6 sent are still on the online account.  Also 7,000+ other messages in the inbox from over 20 years.  I vaguely remember, at some point long ago, selecting to NOT erase the online versions when downloading. Does this help? Sincerely,Franklin

It appears you have a POP and an IMAP account for Franklin, and also a POP and an IMAP account for Fcauhorn. Your POP account is the default one. My inference from your response is that you do not want two accounts for the same email address, so I am unclear on what you want to do. I will comment that the continuing download may be due to a corrupted popstate.dat file in the profile. That file keeps track of the last downloaded message. You might check to see if it is read-only. With a POP and an IMAP for same account, all messages should be somewhere. What do you want to achieve, so you will get an appropriate response? Thank you

David, Thanks again.

In simplest -- and most useless -- terms, what I want is to have Mozilla Thunderbird working like it did before the Windows-10 to Windows-11 upgrade. In more detail (that I know), every ten minutes any new messages online at either Franklin or FCauthorn would be downloaded into the Generic::Inbox folder, but remain intact - and continue to be marked as unread - in the online accounts.

With massive lack of understanding of what I'm reading, I did look a bit deeper into the Account Settings. Specifically at the "Server Settings" under each account. I notice that for "Generic" and for "fcauthorncoleman@gmail.com", the "Server Name" is "pop.gmail.com" and the "Port" is "995"; while for "franklinccoleman@gmail.com" and "fcauthorncoleman@gmail.com (IMAP)" the "Server Name" is "imap.gmail.com" and the "Port" is "993". Are those values reasonable? I do not see any instance of a "franklinccoleman@gmail.com" account with a POP Server. Should there be one? Should I (somehow) add one in?

Please excuse my ignorance. Where would I find a "popstate.dat" file, and how would I check to see if it is read-only?

Sincerely, Franklin

First, you should decide which account to keep, the POP or the IMAP, unless you want both. The IMAP account shows all messages that are on the server, whereas the POP account normally downloads new messages and then deletes from server. Those two accounts will never be in sync. - the POP account for franklin is named 'generic' but you can overtype the name to say whatever you want. - those server specifications are part of what distinguishes POP from IMAP. don't change them So, decide what you want the end result to be and we can proceed from there.

New related question: the POP Server Settings has an entry for "Automatically download new messages" as opposed to the IMAP entry for "Allow immediate server notifications when new messages arrive". What is a "server notification"? My best guess is that it is the website telling my computer that the website has new messages, and thus inviting my computer to institute a download. Is that accurate? And if so, what use is the "Check for new messages every ____ minutes" entry?

I see that the POP Server Settings has entries for "Leave messages on server" with followup entries for how long; whereas the IMAP Server Settings does not. I also see that under Message Storage, the "Local Directory"s for POP and IMAC are different. Not sure what to make of that, just thought I'd mention it in case it is relevant.

So it sounds like I want the IMAP, because I definitely prefer downloading WITHOUT deleting.

But, just to be clear, at my home computer Mozilla Thunderbird I try to keep the Inbox and Sent folders close to empty, with a large hierarchy of folders (under Generic::Saved) where I stash the emails that are worth keeping. Would "shows all messages that are on the server" mean that my on-computer Inbox would be continually updated to show all 7,000+ messages? That does not seem like reasonable behavior, and I doubt it is true, but I did want to ask first.

But let's go forward with only the IMAP. What should I do next?

Thanks, Franklin

- with IMAP, all 7,000 messages will always be in the inbox. messages that have been downloaded will be deleted if you delete in IMAP, which always sync's to the server. IMAP is a good setup, but you need to always remember that, even if you see messages on your PC, they are subordinate to the server. Delete and it's gone. That is, your 'backup' is the server. If you want to save messages locally, you need to provide extra steps. This isn't a problem, as that hasn't been an issue for you to-date.

- switching to IMAP can be as simple as deleting the POP account. But before doing that, evaluate if there are messages in the POP account that are NOT on the IMAP account (typically old messages that are no longer online) and what you want to do with them. My suggestion is to create a folder in Local Folders and name it something such as OLPfranklinmail and COPY the messages there prior to deleting the POP account. Think this through so that you don't lose important old messages forever.

Yeah, ok: I am thinking that I'd like to change my mind. If POP is what I've always had in the past, then I would like to continue with that. Especially if switching to IMAP would require my dealing with all the existing currently-on-my-computer emails to make sure I don't lose them.

With that in mind, would staying with POP be "as simple as deleting the <IMAP> account"s?

Thanks, Franklin

Yes, just remove those two accounts.

The popstate.dat file can be reviewed in the profile. to do that, - click help>troubleshootinginformation - scroll down to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder' - you are now in the profile - exit thunderbird for safety - POP accounts are in the Mail folder, possibly displayed as Mail\<POPaccountname> - click to that folder and you should see the names of your folders, such as inbox, sent, etc. one of the files is popstate.dat. look to see the last updated date. if it is working properly, it will be either today or yesterday. if it is found to be not working, you can delete it and thunderbird will create a new one - but that will force a download again of your mail.

David, Thank you so much. a) With something you said as a hint, I went and found where all the 8/12-present emails had been being downloaded to -- in the IMAC accounts. I carefully saved off those individual emails that were important to me. Oh, and noticed that the Franklin IMAC Sent folder had over 22,000 emails. b) I set both POP accounts to keep originals on the server; one for "until I erase" and the other -- which only holds notifications from Amazon -- "for 14 days". c) I deleted the two IMAC accounts -- including "data", which incidentally dropped the entire size of Thunderbird from 11+G to 7+G. d) I found the popstate.dat file where you said it would be. It's date was 8/14. Despite that being later than 8/11, it was still less than yesterday/today, so I deleted it. I had previously exited from Thunderbird. When I brought it back up all the received and sent emails from 8/11-present downloaded. e) Despite your caution, the downloads did not go any further back than 8/11. A quick check online reassured me that the server still had all 7K+ messages there. f) popstate.dat has not yet been reinstated. I am guessing that might wait until some ?once-a-day? checkup. g) I am feeling cautiously optimistic. I'll watch what happens over the next couple of days and see if it continues to behave properly.

Again, thank you so very very much, Franklin

You're very welcome. I'm pleased your setup is working for you. :)