Hi betsy8, I'll flag your message to move from the Firefox board to the Thunderbird board.

Meanwhile, did you connect to your account using IMAP? There are some folder sync settings for IMAP accounts that do not exist with POP accounts. See whether the attached article discussion about synchonizing all versus selected folders is helpful at all:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization#w_configuring-synchronization-and-disk-space-usage

Thanks for your reply I did what the support synchronization instructions you sent advised. All well and good. Now what happens? is there any "go" button, or something I click on to initiate the transfer? Or does it just happen? And if/when it DOES happen, do I need to change those settings back to what they were ( re-select the button at the top of the page about keeping messages on computer?). Thanks! BTW so far no sign of any folder or contents transferring into Thunderbird from hostbaby mail website. Thoughts?

I think Get Messages should do it, otherwise you wait for the timeout (if any) you set to synchronize / download messages.

Right-click the account in the Folder Pane, Subscribe..., click Refresh. Do the folders appear and can they be checked (subscribed)?

Thanks for that but its a little too short hand for this non techy. Could you spell it out more? Which account do you mean- Thunderbird or the website email program? I can access the folders just fine on the web, but they don't download to the Thunderbird account on my laptop. Can't drag and drop. OK< just somehow found the folder option in web email (not sure how but there I was!)- all of them are set to subscribed. I've create folders on Thunderbird to match the ones on web, but no matter what I do nothing inloads. Any further ideas? Really appreciate anything you know.

Further info- in the settings area of the web email. I went into preferences. Then int server settings. There's an option there to selecer ?Use IMAP subscriptions. It was not selected. I selected it. Do you think that might help. The Thunderbird account is IMAP.

You don't have to create folders in TB if they already exist when the account is viewed on webmail - it's sufficient to subscribe to them. You can create new folders in TB, and then these new folders will also be visible in webmail.

There is only one account - TB just downloads what you see in webmail.

Not meaning to bombard with info, but a bit of time spent on reading about IMAP may be helpful: http://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP

betsy8 said

Further info- in the settings area of the web email. I went into preferences. Then int server settings. There's an option there to selecer ?Use IMAP subscriptions. It was not selected. I selected it. Do you think that might help. The Thunderbird account is IMAP.

Sure, that might help. Most mail providers enable IMAP subscriptions by default, as that is one of the main features of IMAP, compared to POP, which only downloads the Inbox.

I have two accounts in Tbird, because I've had to migrate my website and email from one host to another. So I made an account in TB for both, in hopes of retrieving my email records from host #1 before it closes down ( probably Monday). The website is migrated, and email is working fine on it for new emails,. but I'm losing all my history from past years. Folders sp[ecifically. The host#1 email has downloaded into the inbox and sent folder linked to the account in TB, but no folders. I DID change the subscription etting and saved it but see no downloading happen. I wonder if there's some command I need to activate to get the folders to come on over?

Was the account set up as POP with the old host? In that case, only the Inbox would be downloaded, and the messages sent with TB would be stored in a local Sent folder. If the account was in fact IMAP, but the subscribed folders wont download, try copying a message from a folder to the Inbox, in webmail, and see if it appears in TB.

Also, since you changed the subscription setting, repeat the step above of Subscribe..., Refresh.

Interesting question. Do you mean the original account in TBird- from host#1, the one I'm trying to get folders from? I just looked in Tbird, in the account whose settings access host#1 emails. and it is POP. Should I change it to IMAP? I actually don't know how to change it. In Tbird there's not a field within server settings to change it. Thoughts?

You can't change from POP to IMAP just by changing the settings. Copy the POP mail to a subfolder of Local Folders, then add the account as IMAP, and after confirming the IMAP account works, the POP account can be removed.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Convert_a_POP_account_to_a_IMAP_account

Again my thanks to all who have helped me out, over all the folder transfer methods I'm using are now working .BUT- to recap- I changed web hosts, and email is now with new host. I set up0t 2 Tbird accounts, one with the old host, one with the new, so I could download all emails and folders from old host. Followed yours and others advice and mostly its working. I'm downloading (moving) the folder contents from the old website email into the INBOX of the Tbird account matched with old host. Then I am moving them into the "dummy" subfolders I created in the inbox of the old host . THEN I move them to the new folders in the new INBOX in new account. Many times this works, sometimes it doesnt- Tbird gives me an error message, saying "the current command did not succeed. " There's more to the message but it doesn't fully show in the little pop up and I don't see how to open the message window to see it all.

Any suggestions? I've tried both drag and drop of messages, and using the "move" function in the Tbird "message" tab. 

Thanks for showing me the way!

A further Tbird email wierdness- when I send an email, I always (since the transfer/migration process) get the message that it can't save the message, and asks if I want to send it to a local folder "send". Which I do just to have it, but usually it just pops them into "save" with no probelm. WHYY?????

If you're trying to move messages from your local computer to an IMAP folder, that is a process that often fails or stutters, especially if you're moving many messages at once. IMAP is not designed to handle mass uploads, and you might even reach a daily limit imposed by the mail provider. Upload small numbers at a time, or be content with having the messages stored on the local computer.

That makes sense. I'll try your solutions and its not the end of the world if they stay on local folders. So be it...Any thoughts on the send mail storage glitch I posted recently?

Check the Copies & Folders section of the account in Tools/Account Settings to see where sent messages are stored, and then see if that folder, which might be named Sent or Sent Items, is subscribed.

Yes, the Tbird error message0 when I tr=y to transfer contents of a folder from local storage to the new, primary inbox and subfolders- says I've overused the quota.. never run into this before, back in the good old days when Tbird was linked to my old account/ host. Do you think my new host has a different quota, or is this entirely internal to Tbird /mozilla?

Re- storing to send folder- I checked copies and folders, and it indeed was selected to send to the "send" folder in the correct account. SO that doesn't seem to be the problem. Other ideas?

betsy8 said

Yes, the Tbird error message0 when I tr=y to transfer contents of a folder from local storage to the new, primary inbox and subfolders- says I've overused the quota.. never run into this before, back in the good old days when Tbird was linked to my old account/ host. Do you think my new host has a different quota, or is this entirely internal to Tbird /mozilla?

If the old host account was POP, transferring mail to the Inbox was done locally on your computer, since there is no upstream connection between a POP Inbox and the mail server. Transferring to an IMAP folder involves uploading from your computer, which besides being slower than downloading, is subject to bandwidth quotas. I think this is true with most hosts - you can look up gmail's upload quotas.