Thunderbird 31.0 cannot download all emails to local folder

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I'm in the process of backing up all of my business emails (Gmail) to a local folder. There are several labels which have more than one hundred thousand emails (invoices and receipts), so when I drag one of these label and drop it into the Local Folders in Thunderbird. Only a portion of it downloaded, like 19,000 emails over 100,000 total. Is there anyway to make Thunderbird download all the folder from Gmail ? and is it true that the Local Folder in Thunderbird has a limitation of 4gb. Thanks.

newbie_techie

Posted 2014-09-04T15:09:51.030

Reputation: 34

Where did you read that Thunderbird has a limitation of 4GB? Are we dealing with POP3 or IMAP? – Ramhound – 2014-09-04T15:18:57.927

From this article: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_-_Thunderbird, and I'm working with IMAP.

– newbie_techie – 2014-09-04T15:21:35.693

I read that article and its pretty clear. There use to be a 4GB file limit that no longer is the case. Of course there are also bugs in the current version of Thunderbird dealing with larger file sizes which will never be fixed because development has basically been halted. – Ramhound – 2014-09-04T15:30:24.633

Answers

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Thunderbird 12 added a pluggable storage API which the maildir storage format (and the current Berkeley mbox). Maildir stores each message as an individual files, i.e. does not combine messages into a single file, and thus bypasses the 4GB folder size

But if you do not use the API yes, all local folders do have a limit of 4GB with the exception of IMAP account folders.

seanyt123

Posted 2014-09-04T15:09:51.030

Reputation: 119

Can you give me the name of the API? – newbie_techie – 2014-09-04T15:27:20.900

@newbie_techie - The API is unfinished and the developers of Thunderbird itself do not recomend even using it. – Ramhound – 2014-09-04T15:29:47.293

maildir-lite I think :) can you accept the answer if it answers your question – seanyt123 – 2014-09-04T15:29:51.500

The only reason the developers of thunderbird don't recommend using it is because they believe in the memory limit – seanyt123 – 2014-09-04T15:30:37.240

It WILL solve your problem, but it may cause problems in respect to your own file storage space on your local computer. – seanyt123 – 2014-09-04T15:31:16.230

But I still don't know why Thunderbird does not download all the emails in a large label ? It sill works fine with label with less than 3000 emails. – newbie_techie – 2014-09-04T15:35:55.440

It must be a GMAIL-Thunderbird compatibility error! Report it. – seanyt123 – 2014-09-04T15:43:46.013

@seanyt123 - To a project that isn't even being worked on? There are bugs that still have not been fixed 4 years later. Thunderbird's funding was basically cut off. If I had an answer to my original question I asked in my comment I could explain a work around. – Ramhound – 2014-09-04T16:25:53.823

"Ramhound: What do you mean? I think Mozilla just don't focus on developing new features but still maintaining updates and patches. – newbie_techie – 2014-09-04T19:17:35.183

Asked: 2014-09-04T15:09:51.030

Viewed: 775 times

Active: 2014-09-04T15:23:16.530