How to Have Thunderbird Download Messages Again

IMAP is ane of the 2 main email protocols, and is the acronym for the Internet Message Access Protocol. Information technology is also one of the few truly global protocols; then many other technological protocols end upward fragmented, with different apps and different clients using unlike protocols.

Electronic mail, indeed, has ii dissimilar protocols: IMAP and Pop. They part in dissimilar ways and both have their ain benefits and drawbacks. IMAP has gone through several revisions, with the electric current beingness Version iv Revision ane, or IMAP4rev1.

You lot don't need to know any of the dirty details, of form. I include this information more as trivia than every bit annihilation useful to virtually of you.

IMAP has several advantages due to the manner it works. With an IMAP protocol, y'all're connected to a mailbox as long as y'all're working on it. When you need to see the contents of an email, yous download information technology – a matter of milliseconds, typically – and can piece of work on it. This is in contrast to POP, where you connect long enough to download all new messages – and annihilation that yous need access to that isn't in your local annal – and then disconnect.

Of course, the advantages are non without their disadvantages. IMAP is more circuitous than Pop, and has more points of failure. You besides accept to remain continued to the mailbox, so you can't really download and run off with your messages. Or rather, you can, just yous need to maintain a connection to send messages, receive notifications of new letters, and otherwise interact with the mailbox.

The Trouble

The issue I'thousand discussing today comes from various potential problems, settings, or glitches in mail service programs or servers. Essentially, the local index for e-mail becomes broken or disconnected in some way. When a user then connects to the IMAP mailbox, information technology'due south every bit if they have never connected before. The user so has to download all of their former messages earlier they can admission their mailboxes.

For some users, this might exist a slightly longer startup time than normal. For others, this could lock their email client into an all-day affair of downloading and syncing. Obviously, information technology's not an intended function of the email setup.

Unfortunately, at that place are a ton of unlike possible causes, and an equal number of dissimilar possible solutions. I'll get over the most common issues; hopefully you tin effigy out what's wrong using this list and fix it.

Disclaimer

Email mailboxes, archives, and configurations, particularly involving mail servers, are treacherous. We've all run into a time where a mailbox has been corrupted and we've lost information.

Some of the steps I recommend tin accept agin effects if they are performed incorrectly. Therefore, it'south extremely important that you support everything prior to making changes to configurations, mail servers, or archives. Before doing annihilation, back up everything you even remember you might touch to change. That style, even if something breaks and is irrecoverable, y'all have a backup you can restore.

This goes for local clients and postal service athenaeum as well as server configurations, customer configurations, and everything in between. Back it all up! I'one thousand not responsible if you lose your messages or your data when attempting a recovery.

Sympathize IMAP

We're talking today most IMAP as a protocol, but I know that some people take strange definitions of words like "download." For case, I've seen people merits that their email client was downloading all emails from their account when they sign in, when what they really meant was information technology was just displaying those messages.

With an IMAP configuration, all email messages are stored on the postal service server. When you sign on to your e-mail client, your client has to download an alphabetize of all letters – or sync a local index with a remote index, more likely – to run into what is in your account on the mail server. This is non downloading every message. Information technology's like downloading the table of contents for a volume. Y'all simply download the actual message if yous choose to open up it.

It may be a simple miscommunication about what is and isn't happening. Basically, if you accept a full listing of email and you don't desire a lot of those messages to be visible, file them away in other mailboxes or delete them.

Modify Your Local Settings

Different email clients will have a different range of settings you can change that alter the beliefs of your mailbox. I've gone over a few of the more common clients, with some instructions on how to change relevant settings. Equally always, make sure your configuration is backed upwards or recorded then y'all tin can revert changes later on as necessary.

For Mac Post, yous want to go to Post Preferences, Accounts, Mailbox Behaviors, so discover the "Store deleted messages on the server" option. Remove the cheque mark if there's a check mark there.

What'due south happening here is the server is storing your onetime letters fifty-fifty though yous've deleted them locally. This can cause problems if your client attempts to download them, even though they should be deleted.

Another possible configuration consequence with Mac Mail is to verify the email provider is using the aforementioned protocol. I've seen some people have issues with, for example, their Gmail inboxes. If your Gmail account is prepare to employ POP, just your Mac Post customer is attempting to access information technology using IMAP, the cantankerous-configuration tin cause issues. Make sure the configurations are synced.

With Outlook, you will over again want to make sure your email provider or email server is using the same protocol. A similar issue tin be solved past going to Business relationship Settings, your default account, More Settings, and Advanced. Notice the "leave a copy of messages on the server" and remove the check. Note that this can make old messages inaccessible, so brand certain your message archives are backed upwardly.

Update Your Mail Client

Generally, the first thing I recommend when encountering an issue like this is making sure your email client is up to engagement. Patently, if you're just using something like spider web Gmail, this isn't going to be your issue. If yous're using Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail service, Postbox, or another app customer to access your e-mail server, yous should check if there are whatever updates.

This thread from last twelvemonth is a good example. The users in question were forced to re-sync their mailboxes every time they logged in, due to an authentication result with Thunderbird. The solution was to modify a configuration option temporarily, and so – once information technology was released – update their installation of Thunderbird.

Mac Mail is also fairly notorious with issues involving IMAP and downloading old email letters. Usually, updating the app will solve at least some of the issues.

Reinstall Your Mail Client

If updating your postal service customer isn't working, another alternative you might endeavour is deleting and reinstalling the mail service client itself. In some cases, a corrupted file or configuration somewhere on your hard drive is causing errors to cascade into abiding re-downloading old messages.

If you remove and reinstall your mail customer, your figurer is generally smart enough to avoid bad sectors of your drive, and volition be providing fresh, uncorrupted versions of files to your new installation. This is another reason yous want to have your configuration settings backed upwards; the reinstall is likely to wipe them and you will demand to fix everything up the fashion you like it again.

Endeavor a Different E-mail Customer

Changing the client you use to admission your server can sometimes be done, depending on your environment. Personal users and small businesses are often flexible enough to allow you to choose your software, while larger companies might have It policies that mandate specific software. Of course, if yous're having this kind of error in a locked downwards It environment, your Information technology team should be working on this, non you.

If you're able to choose your email customer, try switching clients. You don't have to remove your old client, but who knows; mayhap y'all'll like the switch. In whatever case, this is mostly a test to come across if the upshot is with the electronic mail server or with your local client and configuration. If the new software – configured properly using IMAP and with the initial downloads and syncs completed – works fine, your issue is with your other email customer and its local configuration. If the new software also experiences issues, it may be an issue with your mail server itself.

What are your all-time alternative email clients?

• Postbox is personally my favorite email customer for Macs. It'southward simple, information technology's elegant, and it's very powerful compared to the bones Mac Mail client. It works for PC as well these days, so it's worth checking out for anyone who has to manage large amounts of email.
• Thunderbird is the Mozilla offering for electronic mail. It, too, works for both Macs and PC, and can be a pretty practiced offering. Make certain you get used to looking through the community forums whenever there's an issue, though, as the majority of the support comes from other community members.
• Post Pilot is another alternative with a few additional features you might find useful. In our troubleshooting example, the major do good is true IMAP, rather than IMAP that has to pass through a third political party server. It eliminates a variable in our testing to make sure everything works.
• Outlook doesn't fifty-fifty need a link; you all know how to observe information technology. Microsoft's offering may have a long and ofttimes negative reputation, just the modern iterations aren't all that bad. Outlook is very much its own fauna, nevertheless, and it might have a bit of a learning curve, especially if y'all're used to advanced features in other email clients.

In any case, you don't necessarily need to fully adopt some other email client; just use 1 to meet if everything works. If it's still broken, you may want to look into your electronic mail server configuration and scan for errors.

Delete Old Letters

This is another "back up your annal earlier attempting" trick, and it'due south non even really that much of a play a joke on. Get back through your mailbox, your PST files, your mail service server, or whatever other location is storing all of your letters and delete annihilation more than a year or two one-time, and especially everything that you lot don't need to access on a regular footing.

Obviously, make sure to follow any relevant laws related to your industry. I know in some companies or jobs, information technology's illegal to delete anything less than ~7 years old, or some other archive requirements. In this case, don't delete the letters. Archive them in a separate PST or whatever means of storing messages is nigh effective in your setup. Then motility them to an external backup.

The goal here is to minimize the amount of letters that are present. Sometimes an older mailbox archive or mail index will exist corrupted and require re-downloading, which tin can have a long time when you take an extreme number of messages.

Restore Your Alphabetize

Much like other configuration changes, restoring your mail index will vary depending on the email customer you're using. As I mentioned up in a higher place, using IMAP means keeping a local index of your messages and keeping information technology synced when you sign on. The mail cache or postal service alphabetize tin can be corrupted in some circumstances, and this can lock you into a loop of downloading.

Here are some instructions on re-syncing or restoring the enshroud in Outlook. You lot can find like instructions for other postal service clients. Give that a shot, backing upward your local cache beginning of course.

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Source: https://emailmate.com/blog/2018/12/imap-downloading-old-messages/

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