My experience is that IMAP messages moved to local folders are still sync'd with the server. You can verify this by logging on to your web account and the messages you moved will still show there. I am not a technical guru on servers, but that is what I see. When I want to save messages, I copy them first before deleting.

Dave, I will check and try to experiment, but what you say is really bad news.

From what you say, Thunderbird does mess with my "Local Folders" when it "syncs", and that opens the door to all sorts of unexpected and unwanted consequences.

My experiences with "modern" programmer/coders is that they tend to do things like that, which is why I asked. They should know better, but it seems that they think that "personal computers" are theirs to mess with without permission.

So, I am still looking for a way to conveniently get files preserved on my "Local Folders" in a manner that the IMAP server will not mess with them at all. but still be easy to search them with Thunderbird.

Has somebody developed AND TESTED AND NOW USES such a procedure? If so, please post that here so I can adopt it. Yes, I will surely test it first - you can't just trust something you have read on the Internet. But, it would be much better to learn how to do it from somebody else than to independently do trial and failure until I stumble on some way to do it. The "language" used in the "help" materials seems to have some undeclared pitfalls.

As I said, copying works. Moving doesn't.

I am concerned that, having "moved" a LOT of e-mails into "Local Folders" already, the IMAP server will mess with "syncing" things that I have "copied" there that are the same as what I have already "moved" there in the past, then delete.

This is something that I did not choose - I started with POP long ago, and somebody decided to change what I have without my knowledge. That makes me wonder what else they will change without my knowledge, much less permission. Clearly, the folks with the power don't understand nor care what I want.

Can I even get back to using a POP server for my e-mail? If so, how?

Looking through the menus again, under "local Folders", I see: "To recover disk space, old messages can be permanently deleted, both local copies and originals on the remote server."

So, that doesn't even seem to say that "copies" won't be deleted in my "Local Folders".

The documentation on this seems inconsistent with your experience, as you posted it.

It would be nice if somebody from the actual company would come in on this thread. Do they monitor? If so, how do you get their attention?

Who is this "They" group? It isn't Thunderbird, as it is impossible to switch a POP account to IMAP. Totally incompatible. That would only happen if you set up a fresh thunderbird and set the account up as IMAP. We try to assist, the the situation you are in was created by you or whoever sets up your PC.

There are no inconsistencies. If you have copies in local folders and want to delete them, you can. And the issue you are facing with the moved messages is under the auspices of the standard IMAP protocol, to which Thunderbird adheres. And, if you want a POP account, you are free to set it up. Just pay attention during setup so that it goes to POP. That is your responsibility. We help, but the situation is yours. You will do better here if, instead of blaming others for your situation, you take ownership so we can help you get through it.

I set up my computer - long ago - notes clearly indicate POP account.

How do I see what is on the actual server? It seems to simply assume that my "Inbox" is the same on the local files and the IMAP server. Can't see any way to distinguish that with the "Local Folders" either.

Something simple like "don't sync local folders" would be a simple and intuitive solution. Making a difference in syncing between "moved" and "copied" files in a "Local Folder" is NOT intuitive, and NOT explained anywhere that I can find, either.

So, I am apparently really going to need to be able to somehow log onto the IMAP server in a different way tha with this Thunderbird on computer in order to figure this out. How do I do that? Can I use a browser, or do I need to have 2 e-mail accounts from 2 computers to see what gets synced and what does not?

Here is another thing that is not making sense to me:

I sorted my "Inbox" by file size and deleted about 70 MB of e-mails - those with the biggest picture files attached. But, I am not seeing any change in the message that 76% of my available 3 GB of space has been used. 1% of 3 GB is 30 MB, so I expected to see that warning go to something like 74% of space is used, but it did not change at all.

Can you explain why?

OK, I seem to have found the answer to my last question about why the 76% use does not change when I delete files. Apparently, that is only updated when I close and restart the Thunderbird program.

And, apparently, it is not provided when the value is below 75%, because there is nothing in that location, now.

So, another question is how do I see how much space I am really using?

One way to view your account is to log onto the email provider's website. You will see there what Thunderbird sees in an IMAP account. This view may also tell you how much space you are using, depending on the email provider's web features. Also, you can set up a POP account along side the IMAP account. You can also just close the IMAP account, if desired, either before or after setting up a POP account.

OK, I'll try doing what you suggested regarding seeing storage space usage.

It is probably my Internet provider that changed my account type somewhere in the past. The group has changed ownership and names a couple of times since I first joined. They are impossible to get on the telephone and useless if I (or my wife) ever gets a human.

I guess I am going to have to experiment with test e-mails to find out what Thunderbird will do with the files that I have already "moved" to "local folders" in the past as I try to get them off the IMAP server without losing them from my local storage. What you have said works for you does not really address what happens to files that have already been "moved" before. And the directions on the website seem to be somewhat contradictory with what you have posted about whether files in "local folders" can be somehow removed from sync without being totally lost.

I will leave this thread open as "unresolved" until I can find a solution that seems to work for me. Assuming that I eventually do succeed, I will post here what I found out and then mark the issue as "resolved".

Lets get some IMAP things clear. Not all IMAP servers are created equal and while there is a standard, not all servers comply. Unfortunately this is nowhere more apparent than in the reporting of used quota. Some servers get the thing correct, others just get it a bit wrong, some outright lie. Unfortunately it can be the biggest players that get it the most wrong. At this time I am not aware of any particular culprits, but Google do report drive quota, not your IMAP quota as to them it is the same thing, space used on their servers.

From a user perspective though, a few small mails do not compare to a life time of happy snaps synced in the same allocated cloud space quota.

Now unlike David, I do think move works, but like so many things, in works for relatively small numbers of mail (in the hundreds, not the thousands) and it does not work on folders. You can not select a folder and move it. Part of the limitations are based in the IMAP protocol, part of it comes from the speed of your internet connections and a big part comes to the updates being done in the background and silently failing, without any error reporting or restart options. Sort of reminds me of downloading files from the internet about 1990 in Mosaic.

When you move a mail from an imap account to a local folders account. I use those terms carefully as accounts in Thunderbird can not begin to sync anything with another account, only copy and move. Under the hood the mail is deleted from the imap account when moved and added to the storage file in local folders. This comes with the same caveats that I mentioned about moving generally. Operate on a few hundred mails at a time, it is not a file system where you can copy thousands of file reliable and quickly. IMAP is a text based command line hidden behind a graphical user interface and everything about it is clunky (because it is a text based exchange) and requires interpretation for the program to act on it. It sure works better if there is not antivirus scanning email or encrypted connections, but that is a story for another day.

Now we come to the next big thing. Most folks have a Gmail account and what it does in relation to IMAP is make things up. Gmail is a single huge database of mails with labels attached to them which Google offers to IMAP clients like Thunderbird as folders. There are no folders at google, so even when you delete the message from all known folders, important, inbox etc that email will still be living in all mail and occupying space. (archived in Google terms)

So you delete it from there, and using Thunderbird's default setting of placing it in the deleted/trash folder it goes there, and an IMAP sync adds the thing back to Google because well there is no longer a copy in all mail to add the tag to. (Shift delete bypasses the normal move to and just blows the mail away with no possibility of undo)

I hope this clears some of the issues, but as I tend to ramble at times it might not.

Hello Matt, Thanks for the information. I have always tried to keep things simple for myself by NOT letting others "sync" my computerized files among devices. My Gmail account is not accessed by Thunderbird - only my ISP provided e-mail account is accessed through Thunderbird from only one computer. So, what I am trying to do is find out how to get info from my ISP provider on what is in their IMAP files for this account. My ISP provider is currently called "Breezeline", but was "Atlantic Broad Band" when I opened the account. They are not easy to deal with, but do provide fast Internet service. It would be nice if Thunderbird would actually provide the information that I need, so as to have no "loss in translation" between the meanings of what is tabulated in one place by one group being compared to what is being tabulated in another place by a different group. What I need to see is how the IMAP storage total changes as I move, copy and delete files from various "Inbox" and "Local folders" locations on my computer screen. Part of my problem is that I do not want to start looking at the IMAP files from multiple devices with multiple e-mail accounts, because that gets me into some of the "sync" quagmire that you described. So, I am trying to access the ISP account info through a browser from this computer. This is going to take me a while to really figure out. I am proceeding carefully to avoid creating more new problems for myself than I am solving. IF I can't get the info I need through my ISP account, then I will be stuck with doing move/copy/delete tests with 40 MB test files, so I can see the effects in the warning of "% used" coming from Thunderbird (I think). First, I will need to push the total back above 75% to see anything. Then I will need to make >1% changes in the total with single actions. SO, the test files will need to be > 1% of 3 GB = >30MB. I may do that with a large jpg of a complicated picture, or I may need a small group of such jpgs per e-mail. (I noticed that one Christmas Card e-mail to me has used 24 MB of my IMAP space!) Any thoughts about how I can do my testing most efficiently would be appreciated. What I really NEED to determine BY ACTUAL DEMONSTRATION is that I can get e-mails off the IMAP server while keeping them in local storage THAT IS STILL ACCESSIBLE TO THUNDERBIRD for searching, etc. I am still thinking that is SUPPOSED to be possible with files in the "Local Folders", but am seeing conflicting info about how those files need to get to the local folders in order for them to (1) REALLY be removed from the IMAP server storage AND (2) NOT get "synced" out of my "Local Folders" by Thunderbird. Programs that are intended to "make life simple for the user" by making their processes opaque to their users instead really make life tough for their users when things don't go exactly as the developers imagined - which should be entirely expected by anybody with any experience in providing commercial software.

You are seriously overthinking this. IMAP is a protocol of its own. To get messages off, you copy to local folders and then delete. It's that simple. Thunderbird has no control over the many email host's execution of their IMAP setups. And I will make this my last comment.

David,

I would rather "over think" than "under think".

I have already pointed out that my EXISTING problem is NOT ADDRESSED by simply COPYING files from my "Inbox" to my "Local Folders" BEFORE deleting them from my "inbox" BECAUSE I ALREADY HAVE a coupe of GB of files that were ALREADY MOVED from my "Inbox" to my "Local Folders" in the past, and I need to determine how THOSE files will be treated by Thunderbird NOW, with ADDITIONAL "moves" and "copies".

I am fine with that being your last post on this thread, because you seem to be annoyed with me and are not actually addressing my concern about potentially LOSING all of my files that I already "moved" into my "Local Folders" with the intention of saving them.

Again, to be clear, my concern is how to be sure to clear up the IMAP space that still seems to be getting taken up by those files in my "Local Folders" without losing those files from everywhere.

If others have suggestions, I hope they will continue to help me.

OK, for anybody else with this problem (and my previous searches showed there may be hundreds), I want to post a couple of helpful tips.

First, Thunderbird will display the sizes of files and some folders in terms of bytes. To get file sizes, click on the little square icon on the right end of the columns header bar and select "file size" as one of the columns.

Second, thunderbird will display the total sizes of some folders in terms of bytes as well as number of messages. To get sizes, click on the "..." icon on the top right corner of the folders columns header and then click "Show folder size".

By doing that, in my case, I am seeing some "Local Folders" that already have much more than my 3 GB of allocated IMAP server space.

On the other hand, totalling the files in my "Inbox" gives me 2.2 GB, which is below 75% of my 3 GB IMAP allocation, so does not result it the total IMAP % used value in a visible warning. But, 2.3 GB does produce the 76% value previously shown in the warning, before I deleted some big files.

So, I am now questioning whether it is true that "moving" files from my "Inbox" to my "Local Folders" still leaves them on the IMAP server.

I am now thinking that only the files shown in the folders column for folders above the "Local Folders" are counted in the IMAP storage, and that "moving" files from the "Inbox" to the "Local Folders" does what I originally thought, which is the same as "copy" to the "Local Folders" and then "Delete" the original left in the "Inbox".

I am going to leave this open for a while to accommodate any further learning or comments, but I think I am seeing the solution. Some of the previous discussion about difference in the effects of "moving" vs "copy/delete" seem to have been misleading.

If nothing changes my thinking after doing some testing, I will then mark this as "resolved".

I am assuming you have downloaded full copies and not just headers into the imap account folders. I'm assuming you want to keep full copies of emails on your computer in the 'Local Folders' mail account, so you still have access to them. I'm assuming you want to delete emails off the server in order to increase the amount of space available on server.

Emails in Imap folder eg: Inbox

• Highlight a batch of emails
• Right click on highlighted emails and select 'Copy to' and choose a suitable folder in the 'Local Folders' mail account.

Repeat the above action until you have got full copies of all emails that currently exist in the imap Inbox.

This will get a copy which is stored on your computer. The 'Local Folders' mail account does not synchronise with anything. It is a completely separate independant copy stored on your computer.

Once you have a copy in the 'Local Folders' mail account - check you can select those emails and they do show content to prove you have a copy.

When you have got all the 'Inbox' emails copied over to the 'Local Folders' mail account:

• Delete the original emails from the imap Inbox folder.
• Then right click on the Imap Inbox folder and select 'Compact'
• This removes all traces of emails from the imap Inbox.

The imap Inbox folder synchronises with server Inbox folder and it will delete all those emails from Inbox on the server, so they will not be shown when you logon to your webmail account via a browser. This will increase the available server quota - aka reduce the used quota percentage.

Then repeat the same process for emails you have in another imap folder eg: 'Sent'.

I recommend you use 'Copy to' and not 'Move to'. Why ?

'Move to' will remove emails off server because you are moving the emails out of the imap account, but if something goes wrong with connectivity etc there is a risk of losing emails - so use 'Copy to' then if something goes wrong the original is still on server and you can repeat the action.

Basically, use 'Copy to' to reduce the risk. Then delete the original from imap folder and complete the task by manually compacting the folder.

Toad-Hall,

Thanks for those pointers. The last, about "compacting" being what finally deletes e-mails from the IMAP server, may be the key to understanding why David said in the first reply post to my question: "My experience is that IMAP messages moved to local folders are still sync'd with the server. You can verify this by logging on to your web account and the messages you moved will still show there."

That first response has been misdirecting a lot of my effort to learn how to effectively clear the IMAP storage of stuff that I am storing locally, and raised my concerns about what syncing of my "Local Folders" could cause if IMAP thought something was supposed to be deleted.

"Moving" is less effort than "Copying/Deleting" and seems to actually have worked well for me so far. But, given that others have adopted "copy/delete" and future programming will probably reflect that, I will change to "copy/delete" for the future to avoid actual problems or misunderstandings in trying to solve future problems that are really not related.