Can IMAP account be in the Local Folders?

[kking]

My kerry@gmail account was sending me 2 copies of each email. I was advised to change the account from POP3 to IMAP and now it's working correctly, however, now the kerry@gmail account has its own Inbox < kerry@gmail.com > so now I have to press "Get Messages" 2 times (once for the kerry@gmail Inbox and again for the Local Inbox to get all emails.

My seven other accounts are all configured for POP3.

Is there way to have the IMAP account be located in the Local Folders?

Thanks, Kerry

Note: "kerry@gmail.com" is not an actual account.

[tanstaafl]

"Is there way to have the IMAP account be located in the Local Folders?"

No, there is no support for a IMAP account being configured to use a global inbox. However, you can use a message filter to automatically move all new mail in the inbox to the inbox folder in "Local Folders" and you can configure the account in "copies & folders" to use folders in "Local Folders" for drafts, junk, templates, sent, and archive folders. The main issue is that Gmail's SMTP server automatically saves a copy of sent messages in the sent items folder in your gmail account, and there is no way to disable that feature. So you can't really move the sent folder for a Gmail IMAP account to Local Folders. In fact its normally disabled in Thunderbird to avoid duplicates.

Normally you don't need to press "get messages" multiple times, Thunderbird normally fetches mail for all accounts when you press it. There are some old threads about similar problems you could search for. It seems to be a rare problem nowadays.

If you have IDLE support (now called "allow immediate server notifications when new mail arrives" enabled in the IMAP account) and its also configured to check for new mail on startup you shouldn't need to ever press "get messages" for it. Most IMAP servers used by major email providers support IDLE commands.

Gmail supports a "mail fetcher" you could configure via webmail to periodically automatically fetch mail from several third party POP servers and merge the new mail into the Gmail account's inbox. If you want to you can configure the Gmail account to let you both get and send messages as if it was the POP account(s), and remove the POP account(s) in Thunderbird. The only way somebody could tell you did that would be to look at the raw message source and examine some headers users normally never see. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Replace_sever ... ne_account for how to do that.

https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/ ... #gsc.tab=0 mentions that each Gmail account is limited to importing from 5 other accounts. I haven't checked for several years whether that limit has been removed.

[kking]

Got it tanstaafl, Thanks for such a thorough answer. I like the "filter" idea.

[mgagnonlv]

I think the filter idea is great but has one drawback with regards to email management.
Either:
a. You move messages to "Local Folder / inbox". Then they are all in one place, but all only on your local computer. You lose the benefits of IMAP, namely that you have a backup copy on the server, also available on a phone, for example.
OR
b. You copy messages to "Local folder / inbox". Then you keep your messages on the distant server, but it also means that each message has a copy in "whatevermail / inbox" and in "local folder / inbox".

If you haven't instituted filters already, I would suggest you try the "Unified View", which is available under View –> Folders –> Unified".
In a nutshell, it takes all folders with an identical name from all accounts and groups all mail under a single heading. So messages aren't actually moved and replies stay attached to their original account; yet you see messages as in one Inbox and one "Sent Messages" box. And if you created other customized folders, they will all be listed underneath as if you had a single account.

And for those occasions when you need to know where a message is from, you may either look at the message (the from or to field will show which account it relates to), add the "account" column in the message list or revert to separate account disply by selecting View –> Folders –> All.

For a decent tutorial, see here: https://www.lifewire.com/read-emails-un ... rd-1173101

[tanstaafl]

Good point.

Unified View is very popular with some users. It can also be disruptive as all "special" folders get unified whether you want them to be or not. What approach is best depends upon how you use mail, how you see things, and your preferences.

Unified View relies upon both a custom view and saved searches. One possible alternative would be to create a virtual folder using "saved search" that contains the contents of all of your inbox folders and another one for your sent folders. This wouldn't scale as well as Unified View does but its less disruptive and much more reliable. If most of your messages are in a inbox or sent folder, you don't organize your saved messages into a hierarchy of child folders, and rarely use templates it might be a better solution.

"Saved search" is a misleading name as the virtual folders contents get automatically updated. The virtual folder doesn't effect where the messages are physically stored. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Saved_Search and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unified_Folders_not_working

[kking]

Thanks all for your support.