sounds like you have an imap mail account and your provider is archiving mail, or your phone, or a tablet device.

sounds like you have an imap mail account and your provider is archiving mail, or your phone, or a tablet device.

Thanks, I had read something similar in other areas but no one had any suggestions as to how to fix it.

While I use Thunderbird with both gmail and Verizon Small Business email accounts, it appears perhaps the culprit is gmail and its "All Mail" folder.

Still without seeing any suggested solutions, I poked around and saw in gmail Settings, under Labels, there is a checkbox to "Show in IMAP." I unchecked that for the All Mail label.

I'll monitor it over the next several days and report back if this solved it because it is REALLY disruptive!

Lets get to the bottom of how gmail works. Most folk simply do not ulot of head scratching.

An email comes in, it is placed in the inbox you think. It is not. It is placed in all mail with a label that says it is also in the inbox, when someone clicks on that label in the web page. That same mail may have another dozen labels attached for various "folders" but it just lives in all mail with labels for the non existent folders attached.

Google have an IMAP like implementation where they present to IMAP mail clients mail that according to their idea on how mail works should be in that folder at the time it is requested (and they maintain the farce with repeated syncronisation of the mail in the folder) This is all good. But then Gmails other settings come into play and other devices.

When you add your mail account to another device (phone perhaps, or particularly) there is a choice of IMAP or P{OP protocols. Cheap phones with limited memory particularly create accounts as POP. This allows all sorts of short retention periods and other space savings to occur without in impacting 5the server copies. But at Google there is a fly in that ointment jar. When you enable POP there is a default of from the date to do it. Stops folk getting the last 15 years of SPAM in their inbox when they get a new device.

The issue with this is that google only download an email using that setting once. Ever. So when the mail is downloaded the inbox label is removed. Guess what the IMAP mail client sees when it next get to syncronise with the server. If you guessed something in archives and nothing in inbox you would be correct. Then we see posts in forums asking why new mail is not in the inbox from people who do not understand this is what is happening. Sometimes they even do the passive aggressive of "there are lots of hits in Google about this bug, and no solutions. Is anyone fixing it.

Generally the answer is in the Google configuration on the web. I suggest you start by checking the setting numbered one two and three here https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop

Thanks, Matt - since your explanation is so lengthy I won't quote it here, but I appreciate the details of the evil Google. I had picked up on Gmail's use of labels instead of folders. I know labels, tags and such are all the rage, but being old school, they are just not a replacement for a logical folder structure IMHO. But, one's gotta deal with how the tech companies think one should work - not what feels natural!

As you can see from the attachment, I am using IMAP. So far it seems unchecking the option to show the All Mail folder in IMAP may have solved my problem. I want to give it a few more days, though, before I dance a happy dance.

So far, it seems that I am getting Gmail emails into my Thunderbird inbox, and they are not being moved to Archives. I am going to keep watching.

However, I am getting an error box popping up regarding the "All Mail" folder. It almost seems like Thunderbird is querying Gmail for the All Mail folder. I don't see anything in my account settings in Thunderbird that refers to "All Mail."

Any thoughts on this error message now that I have Gmail NOT surfacing "All Mail" in IMAP?