I don't exactly understand what you mean by syncing as different from downloading. With an IMAP mail account, when you download your mails it creates a copy in Thunderbird of whatever mails are on the server, so that your Thunderbird mails are 'in sync' with the server: hence, in this forum, 'syncing' and 'downloading' are often used to mean the same. If you mean that you just want to download your Inbox mails, and don't want to keep all your other folders in sync with the server, then you can alter that with your folder subscriptions. If you mean that you just want to download your mails once, when you start up Thunderbird, and you don't want it to keep checking for new mails at frequent intervals after that, then you can alter that in your account settings. If your problem is that the download process is slow and you get tired of waiting for all your mails to arrive, then there are various causes for that which we can try to help you investigate. So please describe in a little more detail the behaviour you want to alter and what you want to achieve. Please also tell us whether this is a POP or an IMAP account. Thank you.

In the "Subscribe" dialog, what do the checkboxes do, and what do the "Subscribe" and "Unsubscribe" buttons do?

Please read the information on IMAP here. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/glossary-terms-including-types-accounts#w_imap

When you are cognizant of what IMAP and POP are then your questions become self explaining.

Matt said

Please read the information on IMAP here. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/glossary-terms-including-types-accounts#w_imap When you are cognizant of what IMAP and POP are then your questions become self explaining.

Are you saying that POP would probably work better for me? Also, the incantation which was supposed to make the answer to my second question "self explaining" doesn't seem to have worked.

It is obvious to me that your asking a whole load of questions trying to understand why IMAP is not pop. I have no idea what your use case is, or what will work better for you. You have to make those decisions for your self. All I can do it try and assist you in making that decision an informed one.

AS for what to the subscribe buttons do. That is answered in the detailed information linked to from that short summary I sent the link to. Here is the link from the article https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization#w_synchronization I have added a direct link within the article to the subscribe entry so you can find it.

Matt said

It is obvious to me that your asking a whole load of questions trying to understand why IMAP is not pop. I have no idea what your use case is, or what will work better for you. You have to make those decisions for your self. All I can do it try and assist you in making that decision an informed one. AS for what to the subscribe buttons do. That is answered in the detailed information linked to from that short summary I sent the link to. Here is the link from the article https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization#w_synchronization I have added a direct link within the article to the subscribe entry so you can find it.

I should have been more specific in my OP. The specific issue is that when I send an e-mail, the most time consuming part is the final step of doing the seemingly simple task of moving the message to "Sent Mail." I very often wait until it times out, then I click "Try Again," and do some more waiting.

Having read that article again, the only think of is that you misunderstood my second question.

Part of the answer to my first question was this:

"If you mean that you just want to download your Inbox mails, and don't want to keep all your other folders in sync with the server, then you can alter that with your folder subscriptions."

The only thing I can find in TB's menus which has anything to do with subscriptions is "File->Subscribe..." which opens a dialog called "Subscribe," which can also be opened by right-clicking the account over on the left and selecting "Subscribe...." That's the dialog I was talking about in my second question. I suppose that that dialog might be irrelevant to my problem, but, if so, it would be nice to know that.

So far as account settings are concerned, I have everything set the way I think I want it set.

If a folder is ticked in the 'subscribe' dialogue box, then you are telling Thunderbird that you want the contents of that folder in Thunderbird to be kept 'in sync' with the contents of the same folder on the server. You might, for example, put old emails in the 'archive' folder in Thunderbird and leave that unticked ('unsubscribed'): in that case, those emails are stored only in Thunderbird, and if you were to look for them on the server (using a webmail interface or another email client) you wouldn't find them. I hope that helps you understand the technology. Whether unsubscribing will help to reduce the delay you experience in saving sent mail, I can't say. I experience it sometimes, usually on my Gmail account, and not at other times.

Greg said

I should have been more specific in my OP. The specific issue is that when I send an e-mail, the most time consuming part is the final step of doing the seemingly simple task of moving the message to "Sent Mail." I very often wait until it times out, then I click "Try Again," and do some more waiting.

Yes you should, now I understand.

If you are using Google or Outlook/Hotmail then there is no point in saving to the sent folder at all. Both providers save to the sent folder as the mail goes out through their SMTP server.

For other accounts, if having a copy of sent mail in the server is not important.

1. Right click the account in the folder pane.
2. Select settings.
3. In copies and folders change the location of the sent folder to sent on Local Folders.