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Changing from POP to IMAP with existing e-mail name

  • 5 biyano
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  • Eyano yasuka ya Platform34

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I use the same e-mail address on my desktop and my Samsung android phone. I was told to change my desktop e-mail from POP3 to IMAP which I did and then told by the Thunderbird desktop forum to change also my phone settings from POP3 to IMAP. I was told in order to do that I needed to create a new account first and then delete the old account.

However, when I go into server settings and I put in my e-mail address from my desktop, it states "e-mail address already in use". Clearly I do not want to create a new e-mail address - just use the same e-mail address that is on my desktop so that I can access e-mails on my phone that appear on my desktop. Help please!

I use the same e-mail address on my desktop and my Samsung android phone. I was told to change my desktop e-mail from POP3 to IMAP which I did and then told by the Thunderbird desktop forum to change also my phone settings from POP3 to IMAP. I was told in order to do that I needed to create a new account first and then delete the old account. However, when I go into server settings and I put in my e-mail address from my desktop, it states "e-mail address already in use". Clearly I do not want to create a new e-mail address - just use the same e-mail address that is on my desktop so that I can access e-mails on my phone that appear on my desktop. Help please!

All Replies (5)

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Please respond. I was told by a different Thunderbird forum to reach out to this group for my question above.

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There must be a solution to this as I am sure others have faced it. Is the alternative that I delete my android e-mail address and then reinstall it in IMAP with the same e-mail address of my desktop? If so, will I lose all of my existing Inbox and Sent messages or will they be picked up from my desktop since they are both then on IMAP? Is there alternatively a way to separately save my current Inbox and Sent messages on my phone?

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Is there anyone in this community relating to Android phones? I was told by the other Thunderbird community to reach out to this group but nothing over the past 3 days.

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Let me try it another way. Say I instead decide to my Samsung Android phone POP3 e-mail address before reinstalling it as IMAP.

Is there a folder somewhere I can save existing inbox and sent e-mails?

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Hi zbadger

Thunderbird for Android downloads emails from pop3 accounts and stores them on the phones internal storage. There's no way to backup, export or save them to another location on the phone.

Pop3 accounts can be configured so emails are either deleted from the server once downloaded to the email client, or always retained on the server. In comparison, emails downloaded via Imap are always retained on the server.

Your options depend on how you've setup the pop3. Are the emails stored on your phone your only copy, or does a copy also exist on the server?

If the phone holds your only copy, you will loose these emails if you remove the account on your phone. If you have all the emails stored on the server, they will download again to the app via Imap.

You could install the K9 email client on your phone. This is essentially the same app as Thunderbird and can co-exist at the same time. You could try setting up the imap account on K9 while not affecting the emails stored in Thunderbird.

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Tuna motuna

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