Stop an account from trying to connect
Hello, I use Thunderbird to manage several email accounts, one on them is not active anymore but I still want to be able to access the emails stored in my thunderbird directory tree, so I keep it active. And the fact is that every day this account tries to access a remote server that does not exists anymore to retrieve email that can not be retrieve, and every day I am asked for a password that cannot work. But the fact is that I did deactivate all options to read remote emails for this account, so that behavior is odd and I am not able to find a way around it. Any idea what to do not to be bother anymore ?
Thanks in advance for your help :-)
Chosen Solution
Go very carefully here. IMAP is a problem in your situation. You could easily lose it all. First, be sure you know where the IMAP account's folders are on your computer. Here are suggested steps:
- click help>troubleshootinginformation
- scroll to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder'
- EXIT thunderbird
- you are now in profile, click the Imapmail folder and then click desired IMAP account folder
- look for sets of files, such as inbox, inbox.msf, sent, sent.msf, etc. Ignore the msf entries, and COPY (not move) the inbox, sent, and other such entries and PASTE them to the Mail\Local Folders folder.
- restart thunderbird and review that all messages are in Local Folders.
If you are uncomfortable doing that, then do the first two steps up to the act of copying and write down the exact disk location, probably something such as c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<profile name>\imapmail\<IMAPaccount name>\inbox
- Now, install the addon 'importexporttools NG'
- highlight Local Folers and rightclick
- select the importexport option to import mbox file
- now, locate one of the IMAP account files (again, ignore msf entries) and select ok.
- repeat for each file to be imported
- you should now see the messages in local folder
Regardless of approach, once you have all the message folders in Local Folders you can safely delete the old account. Had you ever been able to access that server, all the messages would likely have disappeared as IMAP syncs to the server.
If in doubt on what to do, post screenshot of the IMAP account folder.
All Replies (5)
I presume this is a POP account. If so, do this:
- click help>troubleshootinginformation
- scroll to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder'
- exit thunderbird
- you are now in the profile. Click the Mail folder and then the POP account folder
- in this folder, you will find your message folders, but here they each appear twice, such as inbox, inbox.msf, sent, sent.msf the msf files are to be ignored. COPY the duplicates that do not end in .msf and PASTE them in the Mail\Local Folders folder, being careful to not overwrite any files of same name
- restart thunderbird and you should see all your message folders for that account in Local Folders as well in the account folder. Once you're content that you copied it all, you can safely remove the old account
Hello @david, first of all thank you very much for your taking the time to reply to my message. Also sorry not to answer myself sooner to your reply, I was away from work for a short time.
And your assumption was wrong, this account is an IMAP account, not a POP account. So I found information related to this account in 'ImapMail'.
If you have any other tip for me I would really appreciate it, since I am indeed bothered every day with that ...
Thanks again !
S.
Chosen Solution
Go very carefully here. IMAP is a problem in your situation. You could easily lose it all. First, be sure you know where the IMAP account's folders are on your computer. Here are suggested steps:
- click help>troubleshootinginformation
- scroll to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder'
- EXIT thunderbird
- you are now in profile, click the Imapmail folder and then click desired IMAP account folder
- look for sets of files, such as inbox, inbox.msf, sent, sent.msf, etc. Ignore the msf entries, and COPY (not move) the inbox, sent, and other such entries and PASTE them to the Mail\Local Folders folder.
- restart thunderbird and review that all messages are in Local Folders.
If you are uncomfortable doing that, then do the first two steps up to the act of copying and write down the exact disk location, probably something such as c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<profile name>\imapmail\<IMAPaccount name>\inbox
- Now, install the addon 'importexporttools NG'
- highlight Local Folers and rightclick
- select the importexport option to import mbox file
- now, locate one of the IMAP account files (again, ignore msf entries) and select ok.
- repeat for each file to be imported
- you should now see the messages in local folder
Regardless of approach, once you have all the message folders in Local Folders you can safely delete the old account. Had you ever been able to access that server, all the messages would likely have disappeared as IMAP syncs to the server.
If in doubt on what to do, post screenshot of the IMAP account folder.
Ok, thanks again, I get your idea to re-import the messages somewhere else, I did it and deleted the account with the issue, too bad not to be able to keep it as it was with simply stopping the connection. But anyway I will not be bothered anymore, so thank you for your help !
S.
slookeur modificouno o
You are most welcome. I was happy to assist.
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