Is there any way to make Thunderbird retrieve previously retrieved emails?

I had to reformat my hard drive yesterday due to a registry corruption that caused windows to be unable to start.
After I installed thunderbird and connected it through POP to my gmail account, it retrieved the 2 new emails that I had received while my computer was being fixed.
All my emails are still on the gmail server but Thunderbird won't retrieve them because they've already been retrieved before. I'm a heavy thunderbird user and was wondering if there is anyway to get Thunderbird to retrieve previously retrieved emails?

If not, it's alright, it's not that big of a deal, just a slight inconvenience.

Thanks!
Freelancer

 

Login to Gmail and mark all your messages (or the ones you want to download again) as unread. Thunderbird should retrieve those messages once again.

--L.

 

I've tried that before. Sadly, marking the emails as unread doesn't cause them to be retrieved by Thunderbird. Thunderbird somehow marks the emails when it retrieves them so that even if I mark it as unread, it won't retrieve them again.
Thanks though!

I'm using POP to connect to gmail. Would changing to IMAP have any effect on this?

 

Gmail > Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > POP Download > Status > "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)"

Enabling the above option should allow you to download the messages again. (You may have to mark them as unread again, after setting this option.)

--L.

 

Oh wow, that might've done the trick!
Thunderbird just began downloading some emails that it had missed before from years ago, I'll let you know if it completely works but it looks good so far!
And I didn't even need to mark the emails as unread, it just started downloading all the emails on the server

 

...why would you use POP when IMAP is available?

 

Because I don't know much about how these email clients work and when my friend was helping me set this Thunderbird up 2 years ago, he set it up with pop and it's always worked fine for me

Is Imap much better and not too much of a hassle to switch to?

 

Is a hassle.
With IMAP if you delete email on your PC it's gone in gmail too.
Also, more traffic - not goof if you have slow connection.

 

I also way prefer POP to IMAP.

If anything ever happens in your email program you have all the emails backed up online and can grab them again or go online and search directly.
You don't need to delete emails the way free emails are now.

Unless you have a very specific reason to have an exact duplicate of entries on all devices and your main online account.
I guess if you had many different devices it could become a pain and you may want to use IMAP but that's about it.

 

Why IMAP is better than POP

IMAP is a way to leave the email on the server. It's the exact opposite of what meboy stated. With POP, if your email client tanks, you lose all your messages unless you've left them on the server. Which isn't the default on most clients. With IMAP, that doesn't happen, because everything is on the server, even if you read it.

@KonstantinDK: IMAP is even easier on bandwidth. It only downloads the headers by default, and downloads the rest of the message when you ask for it. You don't have to waste a ton of bandwidth downloading whole spam messages.

 

With POP, if you download the e-mail and tell it not to leave a copy on the server, it's gone before you read it. Either protocol can pull just the headers, it's not all the complicated.

Minor downside to IMAP - if you have a limited-size mailbox, you may hit the limit sooner than a POP system that clears everything out. However, it's much easier to manage IMAP to archive old e-mails because everything replicates.

 

Obviously I was saying to leave them all on the server. Not sure how you could possibly mistake that.

POP nor IMAP are default. Not sure what your point is there.

So you miss-hit a key in your mail client using IMAP and delete half your inbox in both the mail client and online.
POP you have a read only backup online. Another in your mail client and you backup that also. Much better.

 

I read it the same way Pitabred did - that you flipped POP and IMAP. Obvious to you is not the same as not needing to be stated and clarified.

Also, POP is not a read only by default. POP by default pulls and deletes everything. Your user-end program settings make it possible to leave copies on the server untouched. Similarly, the same programs will usually let you make changes to downloaded IMAP mail without replicating the change to the server-side mailbox. Neither one necessarily has to have its default behavior.

That said, not nearly enough people actually check the right options, so running on default settings for the protocol, IMAP is the only option for multi-client access. However, most programs set their own default not to delete the server side mail.

Other problems with POP - no folders server-side, only local. Message duplication. Unmanageably large mailboxes if messages are left on the server. Replication of all the unwanted message across all clients.