ok, you have me almost as confused as you appear to be. But here goes nothing.

Certainly the account showing in the second entry appears to be a pop account (it even says it in the top of the screen), but the first entry with all of those archives is more likely to be an imap configured account using the same email address. What has me more than a little lost is why you do not have Thunderbird retrieving your Optus mail directly. It seems odd to have gmail retrieve it and then download it to Thunderbird from that account. You will still need to use Optus to send mail from your Optus address is a large part of why I am confused.

If you are using POP are those 400 odd unread emails in the second account showing as read in the first?

go to account settings. (right click the first account in the list and select settings.) First change the name to add I think IMAP to the end. so the email address plus IMAP Now to confirm what I have just assumed click on the server settings entry and confirm the account is actually configured as IMAP. So if I am correct, the first account is configured as IMAP and the second is POP.

Your IMAP account is not to be considered an archive, everything in it is fully synchronized to the gmail server. You will also find that gmail maintains an all mail folder which contains all your archives. All of your mail in the account actually. Folders in gmail are really populated on the fly from the all mail store. Gmail does not actually have folders. It just pretends.

POP mail has ever been able to download sent folders, that is a limitation of the RFC that defines POP mail. Clients like Live and Thunderbird make a copy of outgoing mail and place it in a sent folder, but said copies are not related to the sent you see online and any mail send using a browser is not reflected locally at all.

IMAP is defined in this RFC I am only including the links as you said you are always curious. I do not claim any real expertise in those documents, but they are an excellent source of "how it is supposed to be" rather than how it is. One of the first things you learn is the standard is rarely fully implemented and Microsoft will always apply it in a slightly different way to everyone else. Talk about contract law, just try Microsoft interpretations of things they feel limit their right to innovate. Interoperability is not their goal.

Can we just go back to the beginning here? What exactly are you trying to achieve? I can I think see where you are, but where exactly to you want this to go. That is what is not clear.

Matt, Many thanks for such a prompt and good reply, but I will need to digest your wisdom and right now i have indigestion. Please give me 24 hours and I will reply, hopefully in better cogent prose? Cheers, Geoff

Hi Matt, I have indented my reply between """"" and appropriate to your comments. It would have been good had there been an ability to attach a Word doco! Hope my communication is clearer now. Geoff

ok, you have me almost as confused as you appear to be. But here goes nothing.

Certainly the account showing in the second entry appears to be a pop account (it even says it in the top of the screen), but the first entry with all of those archives is more likely to be an imap configured account using the same email address. What has me more than a little lost is why you do not have Thunderbird retrieving your Optus mail directly. It seems odd to have gmail retrieve it and then download it to Thunderbird from that account. You will still need to use Optus to send mail from your Optus address is a large part of why I am confused.

                    'So that explains why I am seeing 2 lists of account folders.    Thanks!""

If you are using POP are those 400 odd unread emails in the second account showing as read in the first? go to account settings. (right click the first account in the list and select settings.) First change the name to add I think IMAP to the end. so the email address plus IMAP Now to confirm what I have just assumed click on the server settings entry and confirm the account is actually configured as IMAP. So if I am correct, the first account is configured as IMAP and the second is POP.

                  """"The 400 odd unread emails occurred because T/bird extracted all my Gmail messages since I started with Gmail on 2 November 2024!""""

Your IMAP account is not to be considered an archive, everything in it is fully synchronized to the gmail server. You will also find that gmail maintains an all mail folder which contains all your archives. All of your mail in the account actually. Folders in gmail are really populated on the fly from the all mail store. Gmail does not actually have folders. It just pretends.

                     """"I agree with your final Gmail comment.    I only changed my Gmail settings to accept POP very recently believing that that was the only way that I could access emails on my laptop when there was no internet.    I am sure that with IMAP and Windows Live Mail (WLM) as my email client, I was able to access my emails without internet access.

What do I need to do, if I can, to be able to access IMAP messages via Thunderbird, after downloading and be without internet?""""

POP mail has ever been able to download sent folders, that is a limitation of the RFC that defines POP mail. Clients like Live and Thunderbird make a copy of outgoing mail and place it in a sent folder, but said copies are not related to the sent you see online and any mail send using a browser is not reflected locally at all. IMAP is defined in this RFC I am only including the links as you said you are always curious. I do not claim any real expertise in those documents, but they are an excellent source of "how it is supposed to be" rather than how it is. One of the first things you learn is the standard is rarely fully implemented and Microsoft will always apply it in a slightly different way to everyone else. Talk about contract law, just try Microsoft interpretations of things they feel limit their right to innovate. Interoperability is not their goal. Can we just go back to the beginning here? What exactly are you trying to achieve? I can I think see where you are, but where exactly to you want this to go. That is what is not clear.

              """"I have been researching ‘how emailing works’ and now feel that I should not entertain POP but amend my settings to IMAP protocol.      Thank you for the RFC info but although curious, I am not that curious!! 

I would like to be able to permanently keep a lot of my Inbox and SENT messages……is this what ARCHIVING is about?""""

Archiving is https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/archived-messages