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Lolu chungechunge lwabekwa kunqolobane. Uyacelwa ubuze umbuzo omusha uma udinga usizo.

Why is Thunderbird collecting (aggregating?) ALL my emails (>1000s) from my other email providers AGAIN?

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Please excuse my unfamiliarity with the technical vocabulary.

Earlier this year I switched on Thunderbird to see what new emails had arrived. It started downloading ALL my emails from two of the five email accounts I have. I have a lot of emails as the accounts date from 2010.

Because I was concerned that I might exceed limits on the number of emails I can store on Thunderbird I spent hours going through the different folders and deleting as many of the duplicates as I could.

I switched on Thunderbird today and saw that the same process was happening again. In the time it took me to click on 'Work Offline' it had downloaded 263 emails I already have!

I would be very grateful if someone could tell me:

How can I stop it downloading the hundreds of other old emails? How can I stop this process ever happening again? Why is it happening at all?

Thank you for taking the time to read my request.

For obvious reasons I have unticked the 'Email me when someone answers the thread' so I may be a little slow in acknowledging any responses.

Please excuse my unfamiliarity with the technical vocabulary. Earlier this year I switched on Thunderbird to see what new emails had arrived. It started downloading ALL my emails from two of the five email accounts I have. I have a lot of emails as the accounts date from 2010. Because I was concerned that I might exceed limits on the number of emails I can store on Thunderbird I spent hours going through the different folders and deleting as many of the duplicates as I could. I switched on Thunderbird today and saw that the same process was happening again. In the time it took me to click on 'Work Offline' it had downloaded 263 emails I already have! I would be very grateful if someone could tell me: How can I stop it downloading the hundreds of other old emails? How can I stop this process ever happening again? Why is it happening at all? Thank you for taking the time to read my request. For obvious reasons I have unticked the 'Email me when someone answers the thread' so I may be a little slow in acknowledging any responses.

All Replies (4)

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My assumption is you are using a POP account. POP accounts are designed to download all messages that have not previously been downloaded. So, if you have messages on the account at the time that Thunderbird is installed, it will download the messages because they are 'new' to Thunderbird. Then, the next time you run Thunderbird, it has recorded the last downloaded message, so now only downloads messages received since then.

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Thank you for taking time to reply, David.

You are right that it is a POP account. Usually it works fine. But can you think why yesterday, for the second time, it started downloading copies of hundreds of emails - some from 2010! - all of which have previously been downloaded and are already stored on Thunderbird?

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I have no good answer; possibly during an update, the account's download count became corrupted. What you experienced is unusual. All I can figure is that, somehow, Thunderbird lost the trigger for last download.