I don't want my older emails deleted
I have had my emails deleted from my inbox even though I found a function in the menu that said it would not delete any emails, they are still disappearing. I don't know how to get them back.
Chosen solution
You don't.
You create a new account in Thunderbird, but select the required server type at setup. Thunderbird will usually default to IMAP if left to itself, but with some providers it stops and offers you the choice. In some cases, it can only find one type of account and if you need the alternative type, you need to use the "manual configuration" button enter the values by hand.
Thunderbird should, and normally does, allow you to set up multiple accounts at the same server. I have run POP and IMAP connected variants of the same account side by side. However some users experience a problem where Thunderbird refuses to add a second account because "this server already exists". If you encounter this, I'd suggest you stop, move all the messages from the old POP-connected account into Local Folders, delete the POP-connected account and start over, adding the new IMAP-connected account.
(When I last developed a program that used email connectivity, I had an environment where there were SMTP, POP and IMAP client modules that you just dropped into your own program. There are enough differences between these, I think, that you can't simply swap one for another. There are fundamental differences in the protocols, the message storage systems, the options to be made visible to the user, such that you can't just swap one client module for another. I don't think I have yet met an email client where you could retrospectively change from POP to IMAP or vice versa without effectively creating an new account for the alternative protocol. I've seen advice on places like gaming forums to simply change the port number, but I can't say I have any great respect for such suggestions, given that most of the advice bandied about on those forums reveals a lot of ignorance and a great many half-educated guesses. Gamers in particular tend to be risk-taking personalities, what with overclocking and the like; their interests are in cutting-edge performance, not stability and reliability. In Thunderbird, at least, there are settings specific to IMAP and others specific to POP; if you were to switch an account between the two, would it be able to also switch the user interface to offer the appropriate set of settings?)
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Does this account use POP or IMAP?
The missing messages are not in Trash or Junk?
Your mail provider may be deleting them. Move your messages out to another folder. To be really sure, move them to the Local Folders account in Thunderbird and they will be safely out of reach of any external agencies.
Modified by Zenos
It is a POP email account. I have another computer and it does not delete any emails with Thunderbird. I cannot retrieve them from my main computer.
Please add the troubleshooting information to your post To find the Troubleshooting information:
- Open Help (or click on three-line-icon and select Help)
- Choose Troubleshooting Information
- Use the button Copy to clipboard to select all. Do not check box "Include account names"!
- Paste this in your post.
Unfortunately, that function has more than 1000 characters and that is the limit for this means of communicating.
what I want to see is in the first half, so copy to notepad and then copy down to the Important modified preferences heading.
I'm Not clear on what you wish to examine. I could do a screenshot, but it would include my account info. The Modified preferences appears to be the reason the whole file is so large. There is an extensive list of modifications that seem to refer to printers.
Well, it's the account info we need to see. If you feel you can't post any of it then we can't do much more to help you.
Please, not a screen shot. They're hard to read. Use the "copy text to clipboard" button. Paste into a text editor (Notepad), trim off the tail end, re-copy and then paste here.
Modified by Zenos
Application Basics
Name: Thunderbird Version: 38.5.0 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.5.0 Profile Folder: Show Folder
(Local drive) Application Build ID: 20151221142744 Enabled Plugins: about:plugins Build Configuration: about:buildconfig Memory Use: about:memory
Mail and News Accounts
account1:
INCOMING: account1, , (imap) pop.shaw.ca:143, plain, passwordCleartext
OUTGOING: shawmail.cg.shawcable.net:25, plain, passwordCleartext, true
account2:
INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext
Crash Reports http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-3312e6ad-493b-463f-8802-ed3672150812(8/12/2015) http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-ed80ba5c-3999-47d5-ae47-dadf22150812
Extensions
Lightning, 4.0.5, true, {e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}
Important Modified Preferences
Name: Value
browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
extensions.lastAppVersion: 38.5.0
font.internaluseonly.changed: false
That is why we wanted the account information. Despite your statements to the contrary you have an IMAP account, so your mail is synchronized with shaws servers. So please ask shaw what their retention policy is.
On another issue, did your crash occur while printing? Does it happen every time ou print? or only on some particular emails?
And finding it is an IMAP-connected account emphases the usefulness of moving messages that you want to keep to your Local Folders, safely out of reach of shaw's server.
You can't believe server names, and sometimes the name is unhelpful e.g. "mail" can stand for all of POP, IMAP and SMTP.
Tools|Account Settings|{select account}|Server Settings and at the top, "account type" tells you how Thunderbird connects to this account. After some time, you also come to recognize port numbers. 143 is classic un-secured IMAP.
None of these answers apply. I have another computer using Thunderbird, and I can access Emails going back to February 2014. It is not memory. I have over 2 terabytes memory available. It was in accounts where I located the retention policy, where I checked do not delete any emails, but it has deleted emails before December 20 2015.
Maybe the other computer really is using POP.
It is the identical account.
I expect I have spend several weeks of my life trying to explain to people that it ides not mater what settings you put into Thunderbird. If you have an IMAP account the server policies will over ride Thunderbird.
I do not make this stuff up to amuse myself. You have an IMAP account. So all the strictures of IMAP apply to you. If Shaw decide to delete mail from the server after 24 hours, read or not, then that is what will happen. Thunderbird will synchronize the account with Shaw and the mail will be deleted.
So instead of telling me it does not apply to you. please either read up on how IMAP works, or delete the account from Thunderbird and add it again as a pop account. Then once you mail is downloaded, Thunderbird will respect your retention wishes as there is no reference to the server.
That you can access the same mail account using both protocols is not in question. You can. That you may have an older computer with a local POP store going back 20 years for that same account is also not in question. But these are local mails, not on the shaw server.
What is in question is the account in your account settings you posted identified as IMAP. Placing the pop in the server name does not affect how the server is connected. It is an IMAP account.
Pop.shaw.ca imap.shaw.ca and mail.shaw.ca
all map to the same server cluster on IP address 64.59.128.135
You could replace the server name with that IP address and it would function exactly the same way. The name is to make it easier for humans. The machine converts every human readable name into an IP before it does anything with it.
LargeJohn said
It is the identical account.
Please post the troubleshooting information from this secondary machine. Seriously I doubt your statements. You told me this account was POP and it is not.
Application Basics
Name: Thunderbird Version: 31.4.0 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.4.0 Profile Folder: Show Folder
(Local drive) Application Build ID: 20150109111741 Enabled Plugins: about:plugins Build Configuration: about:buildconfig Memory Use: about:memory
Mail and News Accounts
account1:
INCOMING: account1, , (pop3) pop.shaw.ca:110, plain, passwordCleartext
OUTGOING: shawmail.cg.shawcable.net:25, plain, passwordCleartext, true
account2:
INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext
Crash Reports
Extensions
You are correct and I am wrong. The other computer uses port 110 and not 143 for incoming. It is a POP server.
How do change the server setting to POP from IMAP ?
Chosen Solution
You don't.
You create a new account in Thunderbird, but select the required server type at setup. Thunderbird will usually default to IMAP if left to itself, but with some providers it stops and offers you the choice. In some cases, it can only find one type of account and if you need the alternative type, you need to use the "manual configuration" button enter the values by hand.
Thunderbird should, and normally does, allow you to set up multiple accounts at the same server. I have run POP and IMAP connected variants of the same account side by side. However some users experience a problem where Thunderbird refuses to add a second account because "this server already exists". If you encounter this, I'd suggest you stop, move all the messages from the old POP-connected account into Local Folders, delete the POP-connected account and start over, adding the new IMAP-connected account.
(When I last developed a program that used email connectivity, I had an environment where there were SMTP, POP and IMAP client modules that you just dropped into your own program. There are enough differences between these, I think, that you can't simply swap one for another. There are fundamental differences in the protocols, the message storage systems, the options to be made visible to the user, such that you can't just swap one client module for another. I don't think I have yet met an email client where you could retrospectively change from POP to IMAP or vice versa without effectively creating an new account for the alternative protocol. I've seen advice on places like gaming forums to simply change the port number, but I can't say I have any great respect for such suggestions, given that most of the advice bandied about on those forums reveals a lot of ignorance and a great many half-educated guesses. Gamers in particular tend to be risk-taking personalities, what with overclocking and the like; their interests are in cutting-edge performance, not stability and reliability. In Thunderbird, at least, there are settings specific to IMAP and others specific to POP; if you were to switch an account between the two, would it be able to also switch the user interface to offer the appropriate set of settings?)