Downloading emails from Gmail using POP
I am in the process of de-Googling my life so I downloaded Thunderbird to store all of my old Gmails. It didn't download all of them, however. There are around 8,000 emails from 2006-2013 that I want downloaded, but it doesn't seem to recognize them.
I have no folders or labels associated with any emails. Does anyone know how I can get the rest?
Thank you!
Chosen solution
Bit weird, you would have expected gmail to start poppng from the very oldest.
Are the 2006 - 2013 emails currently in the gmail Inbox ? I'm presuming the answer is yes.
AS you pop download emails from the server Inbox, are you auto deleting off server - if no, then once gmail has got up to date with all the downloading and stopped - which might be a while... suggest you logon to webmail and move all the emails you have downloaded into another folder as a temp store. Check pop/forwarding settigs are still set to download everything previously popped.
Move emails in Thunderbird pop account Inbox into other suitable folders for storage, so the single text file that is receiving those emails does not get too big. I'm not a fan of putting all my eggs in one basket, if you see what I mean. Once emails are moved, then compact the Inbox to remove all those hidden copies of moved emails to get file size more manageable.
Then try to 'Get Messages' in Thundrebird.
It is possible there might be an email causing a log jam, so in webmail, make sure the 'Spam' folder is empty and delete/move the next oldest email that did not download. So if it download 5th Feb2013 and the next oldest was 2 feb 2013, but this is still on server and was not downloaded - try deleting or forward to another of your email address or move to another folder, but get it out of the Inbox and then retry to 'Get Messages'.
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You start by changing the setting on the gmail web site to allow all mail to download. What you enable POP it does so from today, not for all mail unless you specifically make that the setting. Then you probably wait a week while you get a few each day until you hit the gmail bandwidth limit and then start again the next day. Oldest to newest is how pop downloads, so if you have the newest, you need to be fixing your settings at google.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, I did do that before I set up the POP account and it began downloading 2013+ emails, but ignored all the ones that went back to 2006. So that's what I'm trying to figure out how to do.
Chosen Solution
Bit weird, you would have expected gmail to start poppng from the very oldest.
Are the 2006 - 2013 emails currently in the gmail Inbox ? I'm presuming the answer is yes.
AS you pop download emails from the server Inbox, are you auto deleting off server - if no, then once gmail has got up to date with all the downloading and stopped - which might be a while... suggest you logon to webmail and move all the emails you have downloaded into another folder as a temp store. Check pop/forwarding settigs are still set to download everything previously popped.
Move emails in Thunderbird pop account Inbox into other suitable folders for storage, so the single text file that is receiving those emails does not get too big. I'm not a fan of putting all my eggs in one basket, if you see what I mean. Once emails are moved, then compact the Inbox to remove all those hidden copies of moved emails to get file size more manageable.
Then try to 'Get Messages' in Thundrebird.
It is possible there might be an email causing a log jam, so in webmail, make sure the 'Spam' folder is empty and delete/move the next oldest email that did not download. So if it download 5th Feb2013 and the next oldest was 2 feb 2013, but this is still on server and was not downloaded - try deleting or forward to another of your email address or move to another folder, but get it out of the Inbox and then retry to 'Get Messages'.
Thank you so much - it worked!