How to stop Thunderbird from constantly trying to check email

This article may help: https://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP:_advanced_account_configuration IMAP checks mail periodically by default.

Hi David,

Well, I read the article, but didn't really understand it. I guess there's no way to stop TB from checking for email every 10 seconds or so, and giving me that error message (which blocks part of the tool bar for files I'm working with).

Maybe I'll see if I can switch back to POP for that email address. The other email addresses that are POP don't have this issue.

I found a question from 2019 about this, which seems to say you can't just switch from IMAP to POP. There are a lot of instructions about how to copy emails to a new account. I also found this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/faq-changing-imap-pop

So, if you have any other tips on how to keep my emails, I'd appreciate it. Luckily, I haven't had this email address for too long, so it doesn't have thousands of emails in it!

Thanks, DD

I noticed that the error message you posted was for a POP account being refused access Maybe thunerbird doesn't know you're offline. Try clicking File>offline . I think that may stop your problem. If thunderbird knows you're offline, it shouldn't be attempting to connect. Let me know how that goes.

You can usually fix this by going to Thunderbird’s **Settings → General → Network & Disk Space** and checking the connection settings. Under **Account Settings → Server Settings**, disable “Check for new messages at startup” and “Check for new messages every X minutes.” If you want to stop automatic checks completely, make sure both options are unchecked for each affected email account.

Hi David,

I tried setting it to "offline", but it still kept giving me those error messages. Another message didn't have the pop in it, but said I think it was checking something else. I'll have to take a screenshot of that one.

Thanks, Dana

Hi Raina,

I did try that for my newest email account. This is when the error messages started. Maybe I need to set this for all my accounts and see if that helps.

Thanks, Dana

All this discussion ignores the fact that selecting an IMAP folder triggers a chack that its cpontents are up to date. Selecting and email triggers a check that the local copy is the latest held by the server.

Fundamentally IMAP is meant for online use and POP works well for those that need to be offline as there is no remote synchronization protocols involved. That is not perhaps technically correct as most email these days also includes remote images that also require a remote connection to fetch them on demand, but IMAP will always be more problematical in an offline situation that POP.