Archiving emails

The 'Local Folders' account is a special account created by Thunderbird. It contains the 'Outbox' which is used by all accounts if you create an email but choose to use 'Send Later' instead of 'Send now'. The 'Local Folders' account is completely independent of any account. Emails stored in 'Local Folders' are stored on your computer. The only limit is what your computer can store. It does not count towards any server quota allowance. You can create folders in the 'Local Folders' account. If you use an IMAP account for your email address, it can only display whatever is stored on the server. You can choose to download full copies of emails or just headers - another topic. But what if you want to keep a separate copy of an email which totally independent of the server or maybe you want to keep emails but move them off the server in order to increase your allowed quota on server? Create suitably named folders in 'Local Folders'. In imap folder - make sure you have downloaded full copies of emails because you need to get a copy of the entire email and not just a header. Right click on selected highlighted emails and select 'Copy to' and choose Local Folders > name of folder to copy to. I suggest you use 'Copy to' rather than 'Move to' because it is less risky. When you select to do anything with emails in an imap account there is much communication with server and if you choose 'Move to' and it is a move to a folder outside of that imap account, then you are in effect moving it off the server. If something goes wrong in all the network, downloading etc between imap and server then you may lose the email. But if something goes wrong wrong with a copy to then email is still on server so you can repeat the action. Once you have checked you can read email in Local Folders then you can delete email from the imap folder to delete off server. Remember - if you move or delete a load of emails from a folder, it will need to be properly cleaned up to help maintain a healthy file - that means compact the folder eg: if move or delete from Inbox then compact Inbox at the end of the day. If you have emails in the 'Local Folders' account folders then they are now independent of any server and stored on your computer. It is possible to upload them again onto the server if required. In Local Folders account, right click on highlighted emails and use 'Copy to' and select the correct imap account folder. Please note, when you put emails back into an imap account, it will upload them to server and therefore will use some of your quota. The amount available on server will decrease. There is little advantage putting emails back onto server, unless you use several computers, laptops etc and need access to those emails. Most servers will also have a daily or even hourly limit on the amount you can upload to server using imap. So, moving a lot of emails may take a while. '''IMAP account folders''' The folders in an imap account are synchronised with server. Imap accounts are designed to show only whatever is on the server. Anything in an imap folder counts towards your server quota. If you accessed your webmail account via a browser OR accessed the account via any other device using imap and eg: deleted or moved an email, then server is updated. That means when you open Thunderbird on computer, you will see those moves or deleted email also get updated in the imap account. '''POP accounts are different.''' Pop accounts can only access the server Inbox and download emails to the pop account Inbox. Pop account folders do not synchronise with server, so all emails are stored on your computer and are totally independent copies from the server.