Hi Alan,

Apparently your "Applemac" is a deskop computer? And you want access to the same messages when you are using both your desktop computer and your laptop computer?

The way to do this is to keep messages in IMAP folders, not local folders, so they are synchronized through the server. "Local" means stored on a local drive. You can copy local folders to other computers, but they will be out of date as soon as new messages are stored in them.

What do you mean that you "downloaded" your "Thunderbird account"? What exactly did you do? Are you one of the few people who have a Thunderbird e-mail account so far? Did you copy your Thunderbird profile to your laptop computer? Or did you just set up an account from your e-mail service provider in Thunderbird on your laptop computer?

Hello Rick As you can see I am out of my depth with this problem. I have stored e mails in local folders on my Mac for years. I was hoping to get them in my new MacBook for when I was away. I would not know how to store them in an IMAP folder. What I have done is download the Thunderbird app to my new MacBook and assumed it would also download local folders also. It looks like I am assuming a lot wrongly. How would I store my old e mails in IMAP folders. You are a star for answering so quickly. Alan

First, is your e-mail account IMAP or POP? If you do not know, go to account settings, click on "server settings" in the left pane and note the server type at the top of the right pane. Based on what you have told me so far, I believe that it must be an IMAP account. Let's confirm.

Then, before doing anything else, make a back-up copy of your Thunderbird profile. Even better would be to make a back-up copy of all the important data on your computer if you do not already do that regularly. Ask if you need to learn how to back up a profile.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export

Put the back-up copy (and all back-up copies) on an external drive.

If you have an IMAP account  … 

You know how to create local folders. Creating IMAP folders is the same process. But instead of creating them in the local folders "account", you create them in your e-mail service provider account (Gmail, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, your internet service provider, et al.). Right click on the account name in the folder pane and select "New folder" from the drop-down menu.

At this point, though, you want to copy folders from your local folders to your IMAP account instead of creating new folders. The number of messages could be an issue. How many folders do you want to have access to while you are traveling? How many messages are in each folder?

Here's the process:

1. Make sure that your status toolbar is visible: ≡ menu > Toolbars > Status bar should be checked.
2. Select a small folder in your local folders to start.
3. Right click on that folder and follow the drop-down menu options to copy it to your main e-mail account. Do not move it. It's probably best to copy it to the top level of your account. Do not make it a sub-folder of your inbox.
4. Monitor the copying progress in the status bar at the bottom of Thunderbird's window.
5. After the copying is complete, select the folder that was created in your main account. Verify that it has the right quantity of messages. Uploading many messages to the server will take some time.

Repeat for each folder.

Make another back-up copy of your profile.

Open Thunderbird on your laptop computer. Make sure that the account is subscribed to all the new folders. Right click on the account name, select "Subscribe" from the drop-down menu, and check all the IMAP/server folders that you want copies of on your laptop computer. Give Thunderbird time to download messages into all the folders. Large folders with many messages will take a long time.

Make a back-up copy of the Thunderbird profile on your laptop computer.

When all the local folders that you want access to on both computers have been copied to your main e-mail account and you have made back-up copies of your profiles, you can delete those local folders.

Now every change that you make in one of those IMAP folders will be made in Thunderbird and on the server and then synchronized with the other computer. You will not have to worry about copying messages before or after you travel. It will happen automatically.

Thanks again Rick. I do understand what you are saying but I have a large local folder that I feel is impracticable to effectively duplicate. I have IMAP files. I have decided to merely use the desktop for the purpose of e mail storage. I can aways put them into my local files when I return. I will need to live with not seeing the full history when away from home. I thank you for the time you have spent assisting me today. Not used to carrying a laptop around and need to appreciate their limitations. The next problem will be storing my edited photographs so I will have to work out how I approach things over the two computers including the best cloud options. I thank you so much for explaining things so well. Alan

OK.

May I ask why you believe that putting that folder on the server is impractical? Keeping large folders on servers is common.

Hello Rick Having got a new macbook I am looking to make it as self sufficient as possible by mirroring it’s use to the desktop where I can. It is proving difficult in a couple of areas, retaining copies of saved e mail records being one such area. I rarely let things beat me, hence my original question. I was uncertain about IMAC and POP3 but now I understand ref local files meaning etc. My saved local file in this respect is big and incidentally I do back up my whole desktop to an external file daily. The process you explain does make complete sense but the steps needed are challenging to me personally eg just finding the local files on my hard drive. I am therefore wondering if it is practicable to spend so much time with this task and no doubt getting it wrong at times. In my experience a wrong step on a computer can in itself be complicated to put right.Do I really need this information on the macbook when I only save e mail files once a month and this can continue on the desktop. Thanks again for your invaluable help. Alan

I hear you.

I gave you many details before that may seem scary. Most of the important action is just one command that you give in Thunderbird. No need to look for files on your drive.

If you change your mind, I will guide you step-by-step.

Good luck with whatever you do.

Hello Rick Thank you for your kind offer. I do feel inclined to give it a go I must admit. Once done will that mean that I can save further e mails on either machine and that they are synchronised automatically. I have a few more important tasks to deal with on the macbook and I will probably return to this item if that is ok. Because of your help so far I am much more comfortable with how it has been left. Regards Alan

I do feel inclined to give it a go I must admit. Once done will that mean that I can save further e mails on either machine and that they are synchronised automatically. I have a few more important tasks to deal with on the macbook and I will probably return to this item if that is ok.

Ready when you are. You'll be happier.

You are a gentleman Rick. I will be in touch. Alan

Alan, one more thing to consider: you wrote that one folder is "big". How big? Large files cause some operations to run more slowly. Copying gigabytes of messages to the server will take a long time. I do not know if the copying will be more prone to errors because of the file size. The risk of a large folder becoming corrupted is that all the messages in it may be lost (so you would restore from a back-up copy).

These are not reasons not to proceed.

If your folder is very large, we should consider splitting it into smaller folders and/or putting only some of the messages on the server.

Rick My file is about 50Gb.

That is very large. I have no experience with folders that big. I would worry about this one.

If you can think of a clean way to distribute the messages to more folders, I could help you do that. I can imagine, for example, one folder with the last X years of messages, to which you need access from both computers, then one folder per year for prior years.

Re-filing messages by sender and/or recipient is more difficult because one person may use more than one name and more than one e-mail account.

Sorry Rick

The file is about 50kb

Alan

That's different! But probably too small to be accurate. Might it be 50 MB (megabytes)? How many messages are in it?

I have assessed it at 50,000 kbs

Good. That's 50 megabytes (MB)

Rick I have decided to try and add my saved e mails to the server as we discussed so I have access on my new MacBook. As you can already tell I am a little naive on many of these technical issues so try to not get too frustrated with me. Regards Alan

Hello Alan,

Welcome back.

OK. Here's the overview of what we will do. But we will do it one step at a time, OK?

1. Make sure that you have a good back-up copy of the Thunderbird profile on your desktop Macintosh. 2. Determine how many folders of what size are going to be copied/moved to the server. 3. Copy those folders to the server. 4. Subscribe to those folders on your Macbook. 5. Archive the local folders. You can delete them later.

__________

You said that you back up your internal drive daily. Do you use Time Machine?

I like to have a copy on the internal drive that we can access more easily if we need to. To determine which method to use, we want to know the size of your Thunderbird folder. Please do this:

1. In Thunderbird, go to "Help" (menu) > "Troubleshooting information".
2. Look down for a row labeled "Profiles". Click on "about:profiles" to the right of that label.
3. One or more profiles will be shown. Find the one with the statement "This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted."
4. In the information block for that profile, find the row labeled "Root directory".
5. In that row, click on "Show in Finder". You will see the profile folder in Finder.
6. If you have Finder set to show sizes, note the size of that profile folder. What is it? If you do not have Finder set to show sizes, press command-i to get information about the folder Note the size. What is it?

Rick 5.08 gb (968 items)