Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Thunderbird deleting recent material despite "don't download" in retention policy

  • 2 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by christ1

more options

When I have Mozilla download inbox or the content of folders, it immediately proceeds upon completion to start deleting everything in said folder.

The server is imap.mail.yahoo.com. I have no "account settings" on yahoo relevant to deletion of emails, and these folders accrue content indefinitely until I manually purge them. In "account settings" under thunderbird, no option for deleting or expunging anything is checked.

I've switched off "use account settings" and selected "don't delete any messages," but even if this works, I'll have to do it manually for each folder, and there's no reason I should have to do it at all.

I don't use Thunderbird to send or view emails, and don't want to start. It is only for occasional download and archiving my emails, after which I purge the folders manually within yahoo. That's all I want this client to do.

When I have Mozilla download inbox or the content of folders, it immediately proceeds upon completion to start deleting everything in said folder. The server is imap.mail.yahoo.com. I have no "account settings" on yahoo relevant to deletion of emails, and these folders accrue content indefinitely until I manually purge them. In "account settings" under thunderbird, no option for deleting or expunging anything is checked. I've switched off "use account settings" and selected "don't delete any messages," but even if this works, I'll have to do it manually for each folder, and there's no reason I should have to do it at all. I don't use Thunderbird to send or view emails, and don't want to start. It is only for occasional download and archiving my emails, after which I purge the folders manually within yahoo. That's all I want this client to do.

All Replies (2)

more options

to clarify, it is purging the folders on the server, not locally. I wanted to keep recent emails and delete older stuff manually.

Turning off "account settings" and specifying "don't delete any messages" didn't work when tested on a small folder. The originals are gone from the server.

(later) when I finally get it to download the entire inbox to local (minus a 2-year segment it ignored for no apparent reason), and select the now locally-stored segment in the server-side inbox, right click and tell it to delete, it doesn't do it. Instead it starts downloading it all over again.

Modified by cmdrdan2001

more options
I don't use Thunderbird to send or view emails, .... It is only for occasional download and archiving my emails, after which I purge the folders manually within yahoo.

Purging folders on the server will ultimately delete them on the client as well. This is how IMAP works. If you want to keep messages for archiving purposes you'll have to copy them to your Local Folders account.