First is it a POP or IMAP account?

Thanks for getting involved with my little problem. I have several email accounts with Gmail and they are all IMAP. I'm not really interested in what emails are highlighted on the server as unread, except when travelling and working directly on the server. When at home I am just interested routinely in what emails have been downloaded to my PC and are yet to be read by me. The rest of the folders and detail Thunderbird shows for each account are of very little use to me.

But I dont get it, Tbird downloads and set them as unread. You read them and they are set as read. Then Gmail will be updated and mark them as read. (or?) When you access them thru webmail, they should be marked as read.

So what are you looking for?

It's as hard to describe as it is to get it.

When I have read all the messages on an account on the PC version of Thunderbird I want nothing to show alongside the account title (name). As is is at the moment, even when there are no unread messages locally, a star with a number in brackets shows alongside the title e.g. Myartstuffaccount (*14).

I don't think that you have read "all" the messages. The asterisk indicates that there are unread messages in subfolders.

You just hit the spot. I am only interested in what resides in my local Inbox. Most of the other subfolders are of no interest to me. The only esceptions are my local Drafts, Sent and Deleted boxes, where I have occasional need to view their contents.

Although Thunderbird is a great system it is much more complex that the Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail that I used to use. I an simply trying to simplify my local "user view" so that I don't keep opening an account to discover that there are no new messages in my local Inbox.

What kind of sub-folders do you have that you don't want to open?

As you have IMAP the original mails are on the server, Your Inbox and all sub-folders under that IMAP-account are all on the server, what you see is a copy of it. Thats why IMAP-mails can be read from different devices, different mail-clients and on different OS.

If you dont want to open each unread mail, just right-click in mail-list-view and select mark / all read

Thanks for taking the time to deal with my query: I do appreciate it. I now accept that there is no way I can simplify Thunderbird's presentation of material such that I do not have to see what is on the server, even though I am not terribly interested in it when working on my PC. It would have been nice to have been able to restrict the huge display of folders (when I have 7 accounts in play) to those I really need on my PC but such is life. IMAP is useful but restrictive in this case. I will therefore accept that it is my role to fit the software rather than adjust the software from its default settings to suit my way of working. Life was so much simpler when I used to be a programmer. Thanks, and good night.

You just need a few folders (Inbox, trash, junk and sent) you can unsubscribe to the rest. (right-click on account / subscribe)

In gmail thru webmail don't use any subfolders like "promotion". Open settings in GMAIL and configure inbox to just enable "primary" Don't let Google decide for you.

Thanks once again. I shall now fiddle with Google's nanny email system and leave the innocent Thunderbird alone.

You can go at it two ways.

1) Unsubscribe unwanted folders in Thunderbird.

2) Suppress display of unwanted folders to IMAP in gmail.

The first is local and fine-tunable; the second is global and applies to all mail clients etc, which would be tiresome and require a visit to the gmail website when do you DO wish to see them.

Thanks Zenos. I wil fiddle further when I have some time and resolve things one way or another. Oh why can't life be simple!!