Please provide details. Are these POP accounts or IMAP? Are both accounts being updated or just one?

There is only one account, and it's IMAP.

Also, how do I have Thunderbird delete the messages it has downloaded from the AOL web site?

I'm still confused. You originally stated you wanted to combine accounts and now you state you want to delete messages. Maybe if you write a paragraph to explain what you have and what you would like the results to be it would help. Thanks much.

I have one mail account on AOL. But I have one old account and one new account in Thunderbird on my PC for that one AOL account. I want to combine the two Thunderbird accounts. I don't want to lose the old emails; I want both old and new emails to appear in just under just one heading in Thunderbird.

I have an additional problem that I just discovered that Thunderbird is not deleting the messages on the web once they have been downloaded to Thunderbird. I don't want my emails to be in 2 places.

My first question had only one problem, but I have added an additional problem.

If an account is POP, it can delete from server on download. IMAP accounts do not do that. Some clarification in that is needed.

You said you had one account and it is IMAP. You also stated two accounts on Thunderbird for same email account. Are they both IMAP or POP? With clarification, we can address this. Your posts imply three accounts and I am trying to understand that.

My account in Thunderbird is connected to AOL Mail and has been IMAP for years, but apparently, at one time, downloaded messages were deleted from the web. The oldest email in the inbox on the web is 11/4/2024. which is about the time that Thunderbird and AOL quit communicating. Thunderbird has been my primary interface to AOL for years, and I've never cleaned out the inbox on the web. Either Thunderbird or AOL changed in early November 2024. For years I've also gotten a message, when I opened Thunderbird, that the app could not connect to the IMAP server, but it all seemed to work. It seems that what you're telling me is that if I want the messages to be deleted on the web after download, I need to change the settings in Thunderbird to POP. If so, then how do I do that?

There is only one email service -- AOL Mail. Thunderbird is connected only to AOL Mail. I now have 2 sets of inboxes in Thunderbird that I want to combine. What do you define as "account"?

I define an account as an email address setup on thunderbird. You have two on Thunderbird. Are they the same email address? Are they both IMAP? If you want messages deleted from server after downloading, you need to create new account with same email address but as a POP account. That is, you cannot change from IMAP to POP or POP to IMAP. Let's clarify exactly what you have and go from there .

After much trial and error manually configuring a POP account (I don't have a standard AOL address), I now have a working POP account. That means I have a disabled IMAP account inbox, a POP inbox, and an inbox stored under local folders which has multiple years of emails.

What happens to the data for the IMAP account if I remove it? Is the best way to combine the inboxes just to copy the emails from the Local Folders inbox to the POP inbox?

Imap accounts can only display whatever is displayed on the server as seen when you logon to webmail account via a server. This is because all imap folders synchonise with server folders. If you delete emails either via webmail or imap account then they get deleted off server and therefore cannot be displayed in animap account.

A pop account can only access the server Inbox and download mail to the pop account. You can choose to Leave messages on server or have them auto deleted off server when you download. Pop account folders do not synchronise with server. All mail downloaded to a pop account are stored on your computer.

If you have emails in the imap Inbox then they are in server Inbox so when you download to a Pop account Inbox, it should download everything already seen in imap Inbox. You will probably have more folders in the imap account containing emails which are currently on server and cannot be downloaded to the pop account.

You have a choice : Either logon to webmail account and move wanted emails into the Inbox and then download to pop Inbox - however that does mean you need to create folders in the Pop account and then manually move all those downloaded emails into those folders - this can take a long time and is inconvenient. OR and I would advise you do this.... Create folders in 'Local Folders' account to receive copied emails. Then select/highlight emails in imap folder and use Right click > Copy to > select suitably named folder in the 'Local Folders' account. Check they have been copied over correctly. I advise you use 'Copy to' because if something goes wrong you have not lost emails and can try again. I would also advise you do this in batches.

Once you have got good copies of emails you can delete them from the imap folder. Then compact the imap folder when it has been emptied. This will delete emails in that folder off the server. Finally, you can remove the imap account via Account Settings. Select name of account and click on 'Account Actions' and select 'Remove account'.

At this point you can then create necessary folders in the Pop account and perform the same action to get emails into the pop account OR just leave them in Local Folders. Either way, those emails are stored on your computer and therefore it would be a good idea to get a backup.

Backup:

• Exit Thunderbird
• Access profile:
• If Windows OS:
• In computer search type: %Appdata%
• Select %Appdata% file folder
• Select 'Roaming' folder
• Copy the 'Thunderbird' folder to an external drive.

Start Thunderbird to continue viewing emails.

Strongly advise: Do not store all your emails in just one folder eg: Inbox because in reality that is just one single text file with emails appended in order they are downloaded. It is somewhat risky to have all your eggs in one basket, if you get my meaning. If that file got corrupted for some reason eg: Anti-Virus tried to fix anything , you may lose emails.