How do you stop thunderbird from syncing a specific mailserver (imap)?

2

Thunderbird 24.5.0

I have two mail accounts that I have deprecated, one I do not have login information for anymore, the other I would like thunderbird to stop downloading emails from (as they are forwarded to a current email address).

I have not been able to find a way to perform this.

I have tried going to Synchronisation & Storage > Message Synchronizing > Advanced and unselecting every mailbox tickbox under download as I thought this would stop them downloading (this has not happened).

I cannot find any other settings that can do this.

The only approach I can think of is changing the account information on the mailbox so that it cannot connect but I think this will lead to thunderbird prompting for a password every time. The only other approach is deleting the account and moving the mail somewhere else for storage, but I prefer having it in one place for a universal interface should I need to search old emails.

Does anyone know of a way to stop thunderbird synchronizing an account, without unintended consequences such as prompting for passwords?

Mike H-R

Posted 2014-05-20T13:36:41.183

Reputation: 662

Never tried, but couldnt you use the local "folder" (database) system there to move the e-mails into a safe location, that would still be shown in the program, then remove the account entirely? Like after backing things up, or exporting so you don't lose anything in the process. – Psycogeek – 2014-05-20T13:54:37.010

@Psycogeek Thank you, that seems to be a decent solution. There seems to be one problem, trying to copy from the account that I no longer have access to doesn't seem to work (I assume it tries to synchronise with the server or something). I don't assume you have any advice for that do you? – Mike H-R – 2014-05-20T14:26:03.483

Its synced with imap but i can read the message fine in the mailbox, and it can't be downloading data as i no longer have security credentials for the mailserver. – Mike H-R – 2014-05-20T14:33:07.223

oh well, not sure why it wasn't working but I solved that issue by downloading an add-on copy folder which must've bypassed whatever the issue is. Do you want to write up the "copy to local folder then delete" thing as an answer as it solved my problem. :)

– Mike H-R – 2014-05-20T14:36:21.447

Sounds like something that occurs because the whole of the e-mail is not downloaded from the server? (headers only) ? I dont know, are they trying to gather more info when opened? Is this POP type mail or one of the HTML type mails? It seems to work here, right click the e-mail select CopyTo and select the local folder? – Psycogeek – 2014-05-20T14:36:36.860

That's one nice way to solve it, please do answer your own question. – Psycogeek – 2014-05-20T14:38:26.837

Answers

2

As pointed out by Psychogeek the only solution I found was copying to a local folder and deleting the mailbox.

I had an unusual issue with a mailbox that I no longer had access to (a pop-up opened every time I clicked on one of the folders within it asking me to check my password/say it couldn't connect), as I could not copy the messages from within the mailbox (not sure why). This was circumvented with the copy-folder add-on which worked fine.

P.S. I have no idea what was causing the problem.

Mike H-R

Posted 2014-05-20T13:36:41.183

Reputation: 662

Asked: 2014-05-20T13:36:41.183

Viewed: 4 987 times

Active: 2014-05-20T14:44:03.987