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Emails disappearing from saved folder when deleted from inbox

  • 2 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 27 views
  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

Pooh Bear
Pooh Bear
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I have a "Keep' folder for saving important emails. When I delete them from the inbox they also delete from this folder. How do I retain them in the folder without having to also keep them in the inbox?

I have a "Keep' folder for saving important emails. When I delete them from the inbox they also delete from this folder. How do I retain them in the folder without having to also keep them in the inbox?

All Replies (2)

Lampros
Lampros
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Right click on local folders. Create the keep folder. When reveive an email and want to keep it. Right click on the email and choose Move to choosing the folder in local folders.

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 25 Contributor
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re :I have a "Keep' folder for saving important emails.

You are using a technique that works ok if you have a POP account, but you do not use a Pop account - make a Copy first and then delete the original. You cannot do that in a gmail imap account as you will lose both copies.

That 'Keep' folder in the gmail imap account . You see a 'Keep' folder in Thunderbird gmail imap account.

When you right click on email in 'Inbox' and select 'Copy to' > 'Keep' Thunderbird does create a copy and put in 'Keep' Then Thunderbird tells Gmail server to put copy in server Keep folder. But gmail do not create 'copies', they just apply a label called 'Keep' to the one original email in 'All Mail' folder. Why ? Because there is only one original email and it is stored in the 'All Mail' folder on server. The applied' labels' mean that one email can appear in any folder. So now in reality you have one email in 'All Mail' and it has two labels called 'Inbox' and 'Keep' so allowing that one email to be seen in different folders.

When you delete the one in the imap 'Inbox' it goes to imap Trash The Imap account communicates to gmail Gmail puts email in TRash - that means it puts the email that is stored in 'All Mail' into the Trash, so all labels are removed by gmail. As Inbox label is removed - On server gmail removes email from 'Inbox' As 'Keep' label is removed - On server gmail removes email from 'Keep'

Gmail synchronises with Thunderbird imap folders to update them This means all copies of deleted email are removed. You will not see that email in 'Inbox' nor 'Keep' Imap folders can only display whatever is on the server.

Please use this method: In 'Inbox' - Right click on email and select 'Move to' and choose 'gmail imap account - 'Keep' folder'

This means you never need to create a copy. It means you never need to delete the one in Inbox. It means you will not lose emails.

Other questions on same topic for link purposes. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1383175 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1379670