Thunderbird question

Hello,

I just began using Thunderbird to retrieve my emails from gmail a few weeks ago.
After giving it a few hours, it was able to retrieve almost all my emails.
The weird thing is that it skipped all the emails between February 2006 and March 2008.

I've even tried marking those emails as unread to see if thunderbird would retrieve them; it didn't work.

Does anyone know why this is the case? I just checked and it seems like thunderbird retrieved about 7,000 emails out of the 13,000 I have on gmail.

Thanks!
Freelancer

 

T-Bird only downloads from the Mail Server's Inbox - if your other files are in a Saved or Archive folder, or if they're compressed, they need to be moved to the Inbox for downloading, and marked as being Unread. Saved or Archived files, though they may appear in your account in the same place, may actually reside on another server to make space on the primary mail server. Also, if your Gmail account is set to filter anything from the Inbox, it needs to be disabled as well, or files you move to the Inbox will just get re-routed to another folder again.

In other words, T-Bird needs to see them as new emails, even if they're not. Since the dates on the files you mentioned are fairly old, it's a safe bet they meet Saved, Compressed or Archived criteria. Remember that you're replacing an online mail client with a local mail client, not just pointing to a new mail server account, and that your Gmail account has different folders and mail designators instead of a mail server with new messages/tagged messages in an Inbox waiting to be downloaded.

You also need to check the Account Settings on the T-Bird account you're working with - if the files are smaller than a set size, T-Bird won't download them if that function is Enabled; or if T-Bird considers the files Junk, it will automatically route them to the Junk folder if you haven't yet set your Junk Mail preferences. If you haven't checked your Junk folder, make sure the files you're wondering about aren't there already.

The Account Settings you need to check:

1. Click on the Account Name, then View Settings for this Account. Or click on Tools, then Account Settings.
2. Click on the Account Name you're working with (you do know you can setup multiple individual mail accounts with their own separate folder systems, RIGHT??)
3. On your account, click on Disk Space. If "To Save Disk Space" is checked, uncheck it. This will let you download files of any size.
4. On your account, click on Junk Settings. It's probably already checked for Adaptive - that's fine, but understand that T-Bird learns as it goes, and since you're just starting,
it doesn't yet know which are valid messages and which aren't. Again, check your Junk Mail folder and make sure there's nothing there. You might check your Trash folder also.

Note: If you look at the Server Settings Panel for your Account, you'll see toward the bottom of the panel an address under the heading "Local Directory". This is the location on your local hard
drive where all of your T-Bird mail files reside. If you perform any regular backups on your system, make sure you include that directory if you wish to protect your mail files. Also, you may or may
not know that T-Bird is the newer version of Mozilla's old email client that was once a part of Netscape 4 and 7. While you can access old NS4/7 files with T-Bird, if you do that and then re-access
them afterward with the old Mozilla mail client, you'll corrupt the mail files and have a difficult time recovering them, even with a utility like Search and Recover that specifically will recover Email files.

If all of your files are just going into your T-Bird Inbox, and you have a lot of emails from Gmail, T-Bird will automatically compress older files. You need to make separate folders and organize your email so that you don't have too much in one spot. Go to Tools - Message Filters to setup filters to route messages to specific folders for better organization. With the Filter system, you can have any message coming into your Inbox tagged and moved to a specific folder. If you're like me and monitor over a dozen separate mail accounts, you need and appreciate that organizational capability.

If the old files ARE in your Inbox and not being downloaded not matter what you do, it's likely a Gmail issue, but there's always a way around things. Tag the emails you want to download, and then Forward them to yourself so they appear in your Inbox as fresh emails for T-Bird to download.

 

I haven't read all of what you said right now since I have class to go to soon, but I'll try your advice, thanks!
About the archived status though, tb retrieved all of my other emails that were older than Feb 2006 though. If nothing works, like you suggested, I could just forward my emails to myself.

Thanks again!