Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstalled?

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ecbritz
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Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstalled?

Post by ecbritz »

At present, I read my email with the Windows 10 Mail App. It is linked to my GMail account. My GMail account has the following settings:

POP enabled;
When messages are accessed with POP, keep GMail's copy in the Inbox;
IMAP is enabled.

I would like to install the latest version of Thunderbird and try it out. But I would prefer not to uninstall the Win 10 Mail App until I'm sure I prefer Thunderbird.

1. Can I install Thunderbird safely and will it work with Win 10 Mail App still running the background?
2. Is there any chance that my email kept and stored over 10 years or longer at GMail will be deleted when I install and activate Thunderbird?
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by DanRaisch »

Setting up the Gmail account in Thunderbird as an IMAP type account would allow you to keep both Win 10 Mail App and Thunderbird active at the same time. It would also mean that the emails currently stored on the Gmail server would remain there. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_Gmail_w ... illa_Suite
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

1. I've run "em client" (a popular windows based email client) and Thunderbird literally at the same time, using the same Gmail IMAP account, without any problems. I'm not aware of anything special about the windows 10 mail app other than that its written for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) rather than the WIN32 API. Normally all you have to worry about (with IMAP accounts) is that when you read a message using one email client the other email client is aware that the message is already read, so any new mail is always "new" in only one email client. Ditto if you delete a message using one email client.

2. You need to worry about whether or not you are using a POP or IMAP account since POP accounts can be configured not to keep the original message on the mail server when downloading a copy of the message. If you use a Thunderbird POP account all of your old mail is new and unread as far as it is concerned. If you use a IMAP account in both Windows 10 Mail and Thunderbird (as Dan suggested) you should be fine.

While http://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP_backup was written for Thunderbird users some of those suggestions would work regardless of what email client you used. I suggest you use IMAPSize to backup your Gmail account before installing Thunderbird since you are worried. One of the reasons why I like that utility is it supports incremental backups (so you don't need to backup everything each time you backup your mail) to *.eml files.
ecbritz
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by ecbritz »

Thanks a lot for the kind advice. I saw that there is a chat support system for Thunderbird. Where do I find it and when is it open, in terms of hours and time zone?
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

I'm not certain there is chat based support anymore. Basically there are three user communities providing Thunderbird support - us, the official support forum at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/thunderbird , and the newsgroup/google channel (news://news.mozilla.org/mozilla.support.thunderbird , http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla. ... ird/topics ).
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

I added a Gmail IMAP account to the Windows Mail app (version 17.8500.40725.0) automatically installed in Windows 10. It hasn't had any bad side effects on Thunderbird, though I haven't figured out why Windows Mail refuses to list messages older than 2 months yet. Whats weird is I have a message in my inbox about ZenniOptical from 2007 that shows up in my Thunderbird inbox, but not in my Windows Mail inbox. However, telling Windows mail to "search online" for it finds that message. Even after finding it online and telling it again to update itself it refuses to list it in the normal folder listing of the inbox or AllMail.

Is there some sort of view setting that I'm overlooking?
ecbritz
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by ecbritz »

Windows 10 Mail has it's own quirks. For instance, the correspondence of a contact of mine in The Netherlands never shows up in Mail. I usually discover it a month later at GMail. No apparent reason for this.

There might be a setting for the number of emails Mail will show. But as long as my huge mail store at GMail is not deleted, I'm OK with Windows Mail because it will search for old email online, i.e. at GMail. The advantage of Windows Mail is that it's button is shown on my taskbar, so its easy to access. I can see new email arriving at the button and also as a Windows 10 notification. Its simple and fast compared to going to the GMail site.

The most frustrating disadvantage is that I can't switch the English auto-correction off in Windows Mail, try as I might -- and I usually don't write in English. It does not matter what you do in Windows 10 Settings, it will "correct" any word recognised as a word "misspelt in English".

Equally annoying is the fact that you sometimes don't see the spaces between paragraphs as they will appear to the receiver of the mail. If I copy something from the internet to Windows Mail, and enter a single Return between paragraphs, it will probably arrive as three line spaces, three Returns, at the receiving end. I will be surprised if Thunderbird 52 is without its own maddening quirks. Such is life.

The fact that I have to install Thunderbird for POP, sounds like trouble. I don't actually know what POP is, other than that it involves special settings, codes you have to know, etc. With Windows 10 Mail, you simply supply your email address, your GMail password etc, and you're good to go. My GMail account was set up as I have described at the beginning of this thread, and Windows Mail seemed happy with that. That's why I thought Chat support might want to help me with a complicated installation.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

You don't have to use POP. In fact Thunderbird defaults to using IMAP (what Windows 10 Mail is also using) if you add a Gmail account. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Gmail . If you have problems its easy to get help for that as using Gmail is so popular.

When you install Thunderbird it should automatically run the new account wizard. If it doesn't create a shortcut in the task bar you can tell Windows 10 to pin the application to the task bar by right clicking on its icon in the Windows start menu and selecting "pin to task bar". . You can also install an add-on to have it minimize to the system tray. If you want to do that we can explain how to install the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunde ... ed/?src=ss add-on.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Getting_start ... hunderbird
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BruceAWittmeier
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by BruceAWittmeier »

tanstaafl wrote:I added a Gmail IMAP account to the Windows Mail app (version 17.8500.40725.0) automatically installed in Windows 10. It hasn't had any bad side effects on Thunderbird, though I haven't figured out why Windows Mail refuses to list messages older than 2 months yet. Whats weird is I have a message in my inbox about ZenniOptical from 2007 that shows up in my Thunderbird inbox, but not in my Windows Mail inbox. However, telling Windows mail to "search online" for it finds that message. Even after finding it online and telling it again to update itself it refuses to list it in the normal folder listing of the inbox or AllMail.

Is there some sort of view setting that I'm overlooking?
Don't know if you found your answer but might this be it?

===
Windows 10 email client:

Left column -- Select Accounts from Windows 10 email client

Right column -- select the email account to edit

In the dialog box select "Change mailbox Sync Settings"

3rd element down -- Select "Change download to anytime"
===
I often take a long windy road to my destination. Upon arrival, I wonder how I missed the shortcut.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

That was the answer, thanks.
ecbritz
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by ecbritz »

Thanks for the advice -- it's something I now also know, having learnt it from you.

As I said before, one of the problems with Windows 10 Mail is that it auto-corrects every word that looks like a misspelt English word. This behaviour means that misspelling is forced on you when using another language. "Tipe" will be forcibly misspelt as "Type" and so forth.

Do you perhaps have an answer?

The matter of the number of email copies being shown in the email client brings me to another question.

Should I install Thunderbird, how do I limit, beforehand, the number email copies it will fetch from GMail? I don't want to be flooded by perhaps 10,000 emails from the year 1998 onwards!

Thanks so much for all the time and attention paid to my problems.

By the way, I see there IS a chat support service for Thunderbird, requiring a US$ 50 deposit to start a chat. Scary, that people will pay $50 per incident to find their way through Thunderbird!
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Minimize_the_ ... _a_profile . You can configure the IMAP account to only download headers to the hard disk, not to download messages to the hard disk, and fetch the contents of the message you want to read into memory as needed. Downloading the headers is fairly quick and doesn't take much space. Its needed to generate the folder listing. It doesn't have any of the message contents. That is the way IMAP accounts used to work before email clients started having offline folders (downloading copies of the message to the hard disk). The main downside is that you have to disable global search. However, there are several other search mechanisms available such as the quick filter bar (searches the current folder).

Thunderbird doesn't autocorrect. It supports "check spelling before sending" and "enable spell check as you type". You can enable/disable those features using tools -> options -> composition -> spelling.

There are numerous companies that will sell you support for Thunderbird. Some claim to be Mozilla or affiliated with Mozilla. Mozilla does not offer or recommend any paid support. Every thread I've read where somebody used one of those companies the user was very unhappy about the support provided.
ecbritz
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by ecbritz »

If I understand you correctly, all my GMail email over the past 20 odd years will flood into my newly installed Thunderbird inbox, unless I do something that will disable Global Search? I can do Global Search at my GMail webpage, that is not a problem for me. What I would like, is that the latest 20 or 30 emails received be drawn into my inbox after installation of Thunderbird. Not the remaimimg thousands. Can this be pre-arranged?
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by tanstaafl »

"If I understand you correctly, all my GMail email over the past 20 odd years will flood into my newly installed Thunderbird inbox, unless I do something that will disable Global Search?"

Not quite. You would need to disable global search but you can control what folders it would download messages for. Regardless, you would not get mail in your Thunderbird inbox that is not currently stored in your inbox if you used webmail. If you have kept most of the mail you have received over 20 years in your inbox (rather than deleting a lot of it or moving it to other folders) don't overlook just logging into gmail webmail with a browser and moving most of the old mail to other folders. The reason I suggest doing that via webmail rather than windows 10 mail is that avoids gmails bandwidth limitations.

"What I would like, is that the latest 20 or 30 emails received be drawn into my inbox after installation of Thunderbird. Not the remaimimg thousands. Can this be pre-arranged?"

Maybe.

You could specify that only your inbox is to have a offline folder, so that only messages for it are downloaded to your hard disk. You can also specify "synchronize the most recent X days" in the accounts synchronization & storage settings. That would let you limit the number of messages downloaded, but it might wind up being 50 or 100, not 20 or 30.

However downloading the messages probably doesn't provide you the benefits that you are expecting. They are not used as a cache or to improve performance. Even when already downloaded Thunderbird would still fetch the message from the server whenever you open it, unless you are configured to work offline per file -> offline -> work offline. The main benefit of the offline folders is that you can read the already downloaded messages when you have no network connection, and they're used to help build a search index for global search. If you are willing to sacrifice the ability to do a global search you can easily get by without downloading any messages to the hard disk.

I suggest you rethink why you want to download the messages to the hard disk. Its not necessary in order to read them, and it doesn't improve performance. Thunderbird works differently than Windows 10 mail.
ecbritz
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Re: Thunderbird installation safe with Win 10 Mail uninstall

Post by ecbritz »

Thanks very much for the advice, I appreciate it greatly. Because I am very busy at the moment, I have postponed migration to Thunderbird to a later date. Meanwhile, I have managed to solve the problem of erroneous auto-correcting in Win 10 Mail. The maddening thing is that Microsoft Support insists on giving the wrong answer. If you pose the question to Microsoft, it comes up with this advice:

Click on Start and choose Settings.
Select Devices.
Choose Typing in the left pane.
Set the toggler to off for Auto correct misspelled words.

This won't solve the problem of Mail trying to auto-correct words to their nearest English equivalent. What you have to do, is to select your language, e.g. Dutch, from the language bar located next to the time/date display on your taskbar in Windows 10. If your particular language is not available in the language bar, you can add it at the Keyboard/Language settings of Windows 10 settings. You could for instance choose a US keyboard combined with Dutch as language. Then you won't have the problem of Win 10 Mail auto-correcting your typing into English. A new problem is that you might find Dutch suddenly popping up in menu's all over your PC, with the meanings not quite clear. In other words, you have to change the language, using the language bar, all the time. The state of affairs rather lamentable.
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