Changing email host while preserving folder in Thunderbird
I have been using the free Google Apps to host several email accounts accessed with Thunderbird for many years, but I just received notice that Google will cease the free service that has been grandfathered up to now. I want to move my email hosting to another ISP where I have a website already. I know how to change the account settings in Thunderbird and the DNS to point to the new host. I am wondering, however, if I can just change those settings and have the emails continue to accumulate in the same Thunderbird folder. I am using IMAP protocol, and I have it set to sync only for 30 days. (I back up the emails locally so, while I normally have more than a year of past emails within Thunderbird, I don't really need to sync anything that happened more than 30 days ago.)
I am thinking I would first switch the DNS and make sure that is working. Then I would go into Thunderbird settings and change the IMAP settings to point to the new host. I hope that any new emails would just start adding to the ones already in that Thunderbird folder, keeping all the old ones there also. It might also sync from Thunderbird to the new host the last 30 days of email, which is fine. I might also need to log directly into Google a day or so later to see if any emails ended up there because of DNS propagation delays. This would make the transition in Thunderbird completely transparent. If I have to instead create a new Thunderbird folder for any future emails, that will be very confusing and inconvenient for me.
Does anyone know if this will work, and if my plan is the correct way? Thanks.
Alle antwoorden (3)
Those messages are on the Google server and will not automatically appear with a new account. If you want the old messages to continue to appear as though nothing changed, you should create new accounts while google accounts are active and copy messages from google account to new account. I agree it's inconvenient, but you're making a big move, sorta' like moving to a new house, but wanting to still sit in the living room of the old house. :)
Thanks for your reply. I also save the messages locally on the computer with Thunderbird, although I do trim this folder from time to time so only about a year's email is on the local computer. The rest are in my locally saved backup. What I want is for the new messages from the new server to appear in sequence in the same Thunderbird mail folder along with the old ones already stored there and without duplicates as if nothing had changed. I really don't mind if the older messages are not on the new server (although, as I noted, if I have TB set to sync for 30 days, I assume that TB would push the last 30 days from its local folders to the server when it first connects). I am afraid if I copy messages from Google to the new server that they will be downloaded again to TB as duplicates. I am also not sure if TB will just continue to add to the current folder without any issues. I understand that IMAP is supposed to sync with each device, but I do not really understand the details of how that happens.
True, uploading could cause duplicates if you retain all messages in local folders. It may be best to treat the old IMAP account separately and download to separate local folders. IMAP is a living system and attempts to insert messages without impacting on sequences and syncing may be a dance too difficult to make work reliably.