Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

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rick7
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Joined: July 16th, 2005, 5:33 am

Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by rick7 »

I like to save all my emails going back years, and for as long as I've been using Thunderbird I've only used a POP account and that's (mostly) been working fine. Now times have changed and I have way too many computing devices and realize the advantages of using IMAP so that everything stays synchronized. My question: in the same Thunderbird profile for one computer can I set up two accounts for the same email address, one POP and the other IMAP? My vision is that when I use the IMAP account everything will be synchronized with the IMAP accounts on my other devices, and I know that my ISP's mail server will only store maybe one week of emails. But when I use the POP account on this Windows 10 PC everything will be local and I'll be able to save emails to my heart's content on my computer for as far back as I want just as I've been doing for years. Is this possible? I guess it entails having a POP account and an IMAP account within the same profile.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by tanstaafl »

Yes. You can have both a POP and a IMAP account for the same email address/mailbox in the same profile. Some people do that when thinking about switching from POP to IMAP, and want to get some experience using an IMAP account while making up their mind. The new account wizard just expects a unique combination of the account type (POP or IMAP), mail server name, and username when creating an account.

However, why not just use (only) a IMAP account and create a message filter that automatically copies new mail to a archive folder in "Local Folders". That way you can access your mail from multiple computers and can also "save emails to my heart's content on my computer for as far back as I want". If your ISP imposes a really small quota so that you can only keep a weeks worth of messages in the IMAP account you could set up message aging to automatically delete messages older than X days. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Message_aging

Another solution would be to switch to a Gmail IMAP account. You could configure it to automatically fetch new mail from the ISP email account into the Gmail inbox using Gmail's mail fetcher feature per https://www.howtogeek.com/school/gmail-guide/lesson9/ . That will give you as much time as you need (years even) to transition to a new email address without risking losing any mail. Gmail has much better spam detection and a 15GB quota.
rick7
Posts: 285
Joined: July 16th, 2005, 5:33 am

Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by rick7 »

That is brilliant. THANK YOU. I think for now I'll set it up so that I have both IMAP and POP, and then once I get the feel for it to then consider doing the message filter that you suggest to copy new email into Local Folders. Much appreciated.

I've only been thinking about doing this for the last 3 years...
rick7
Posts: 285
Joined: July 16th, 2005, 5:33 am

Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by rick7 »

UPDATE THE NEXT MORNING: I've added an IMAP account and everything on the mail server poured into it and that looks great. I then set up a message filter in that newly-created IMAP account to copy all incoming messages into an Archive folder on Local Folders and that looks good as well. I'll play around with this for a while. If everything works, I'll then move all my POP account archives, which go back 7 or 8 years, to the subfolders of the newly-created Archives folder on Local Folders.

This has been a long time coming.
rick7
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Joined: July 16th, 2005, 5:33 am

Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by rick7 »

Can someone help me understand what the Local Folders are and how they work? I created a folder called Archive off of Local Folders (which existed already). Now I'd like to be able to 'archive' messages in this Archive folder (which my message filter copies from the IMAP account) into dated subfolders. When I select a set of messages and choose Message > Archive I see that it uses the Account Settings from my POP3 account for the same email address. Not sure I understand the relationship between my POP account and Local Folders. Thanks for any help navigating these waters.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by tanstaafl »

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Local_Folders

Local Folders is a pseudo account not necessarily associated with any POP/IMAP accounts, though Local Folders can be used to provide a global inbox. That associates it with one or more POP accounts, who get hidden in the folder pane, and whose mail shows up in Local Folders.

Local Folders provides a useful common storage area for other accounts, and a way to permanently store a copy of messages for IMAP accounts. You can't permanently rely upon storing messages in offline folders for a IMAP account since if you delete the original message when the folders synch, the copy in the offline folder is removed. They are safe if archived in Local Folders.
krewel
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Joined: January 20th, 2021, 4:33 pm

Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by krewel »

RE: Both POP and IMAP accounts in use for a single email addy

I know this post is several years old, but it gave the exact information that I was looking for (in thorough and easy-to-understand explanations). The Local Folders info was a bonus, also very useful, easily understood and implemented.

Thanks to those people, like tanstaafl, who give their time and use their expertise and knowledge to help others. There are many countless people, like me, who truly appreciate it, most especially after looking for a solution for some time and, in a stroke of "Google Search" luck, find the exact answer in just a few minutes of a really good day!
GLORY BE!.....and THANK YOU!
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DanRaisch
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Re: Can I have two accounts, one POP and one IMAP?

Post by DanRaisch »

You're welcome.

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