This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

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ep2012
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This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by ep2012 »

So someone here said that TB is removing POP & IMAP is better & encouraged me to change, so last year I did & I KNEW there were reasons why it's not a good idea.

I just switching hosting companies & had to change my name servers.

Well I just lost all the mail I had for 2 1/4 weeks from another hoster. Even lost mail from a few hours ago.

And yes it was only from the inbox, but it's not good. :(

I REALLY want to go back to POP <sigh>
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tanstaafl
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

The Thunderbird developers seem to push IMAP accounts but I doubt POP support would ever be removed. I suspect your problem was due to your expecting IMAP accounts to work like POP accounts do. When you change email providers for a IMAP account you lose access to your old messages since it can't fetch them anymore, and when Thunderbird synch's the remote and offline folders it will delete any old offline folders because their mail doesn't exist on the mail server.

If you switch email providers its safest to add the new account, move any old mail to it and then delete the old account rather than modify the mail server/settings in the old account. If you still have the ability to login to your old hosting company using a browser you could add the account again in Thunderbird and move the messages to the account with your new hosting company. Another possibility would be to import the offline folders from a backup of the profile per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders

IMAP accounts do have some real advantages. But they do work differently.
ep2012
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by ep2012 »

tanstaafl wrote:The Thunderbird developers seem to push IMAP accounts but I doubt POP support would ever be removed. I suspect your problem was due to your expecting IMAP accounts to work like POP accounts do. When you change email providers for a IMAP account you lose access to your old messages since it can't fetch them anymore, and when Thunderbird synch's the remote and offline folders it will delete any old offline folders because their mail doesn't exist on the mail server.

If you switch email providers its safest to add the new account, move any old mail to it and then delete the old account rather than modify the mail server/settings in the old account. If you still have the ability to login to your old hosting company using a browser you could add the account again in Thunderbird and move the messages to the account with your new hosting company. Another possibility would be to import the offline folders from a backup of the profile per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders

IMAP accounts do have some real advantages. But they do work differently.
I know they work differently, I just forgot this would happen, & I didn't notice it when I moved hosters 2 weeks ago. The new hoster turned out to be a problem so I had to move back to the old one.

Everything you said is way too much work. Why would ANYONE want to do all of that work <sigh>

I get that people want to sync all of their devices to have the mail the same all over, but for me my mail is on ONE computer, I don't use TB on my phone b/c I rarely use it for anything other than texting, calling & a smidgen of surfing. For me it doesn't replace a computer b/c it's very low end compared to a REAL computer. I can type 70 wpm & fly with my mouse on my computer, & on a phone it takes me 10 times as long to do one task.

I don't have a tablet & my other computers I don't mail from.

If I wanted to switch back to POP, I'd have to add brand new accounts to TB & copy all the e-mails over, right?

:(

Thanks & Happy NY
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tanstaafl
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

"If I wanted to switch back to POP, I'd have to add brand new accounts to TB & copy all the e-mails over, right?"

Yes.

Or you could create a message filter that automatically copied or moved new mail from the IMAP accounts inbox to the inbox in "Local Folders". "Local Folders" stores messages just like a POP account. You could do that for each account and keep the IMAP accounts minimized in the folder pane, and use the inbox in Local Folders to read all of your new mail. Pretty much like the "global inbox" option for POP accounts except it doesn't completely hide the other accounts in the folder pane. You could use the Manually Resort add-on to reorder the accounts order. Use the older one at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... sion-1.1.1 if you're still on Thunderbird 52.9.1.

Given how much you seem to dislike IMAP I doubt you'd do that but I thought I'd mention it as a option.
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by wsmwk »

There is zero chance that pop will be dropped - you have been misinformed. If you lost imap data - let me suggest that you didn't need to. If you had backed up your own imap data, just like you were backing up your pop data, then you would have had little data loss. Further, perhaps you should not trust that ISP at all, with imap or pop data.

tanstaafl, I don't know where you get the ideat that just developers (can) push/recommend imap. And there are reasons that pop is becoming a more niche choice.
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tanstaafl
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

wsmwk wrote:tanstaafl, I don't know where you get the ideat that just developers (can) push/recommend imap. And there are reasons that pop is becoming a more niche choice.
I think you mis-interpreted my comments. I frequently advocate switching to IMAP accounts . In fact I've done so to ep2012 before.
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by wsmwk »

My bad. Thanks for clarifying
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by ep2012 »

tanstaafl wrote:"If I wanted to switch back to POP, I'd have to add brand new accounts to TB & copy all the e-mails over, right?"

Yes.

Or you could create a message filter that automatically copied or moved new mail from the IMAP accounts inbox to the inbox in "Local Folders". "Local Folders" stores messages just like a POP account. You could do that for each account and keep the IMAP accounts minimized in the folder pane, and use the inbox in Local Folders to read all of your new mail. Pretty much like the "global inbox" option for POP accounts except it doesn't completely hide the other accounts in the folder pane. You could use the Manually Resort add-on to reorder the accounts order. Use the older one at https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... sion-1.1.1 if you're still on Thunderbird 52.9.1.

Given how much you seem to dislike IMAP I doubt you'd do that but I thought I'd mention it as a option.
I already have tons of accounts in local folders, so that's not going to work.

I will have my geek guy review what you said to see if it's doable.

Thanks
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by ep2012 »

wsmwk wrote:There is zero chance that pop will be dropped - you have been misinformed. If you lost imap data - let me suggest that you didn't need to. If you had backed up your own imap data, just like you were backing up your pop data, then you would have had little data loss. Further, perhaps you should not trust that ISP at all, with imap or pop data.

tanstaafl, I don't know where you get the ideat that just developers (can) push/recommend imap. And there are reasons that pop is becoming a more niche choice.
Why would I have had to backup my data on POP? I've never had to do that before. It stays in my inbox & there will probably be some loss of e-mails as the sites are propagading, but with IMAP b/c the stuff is stored on the server, it got lost.

But maybe it was b/c of that hoster, who knows in the end. It was a stressful experience overall.
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tanstaafl
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

"I already have tons of accounts in local folders, so that's not going to work."

You can customize the columns in the folder listing (click on the weird little widget at the far right of the column headers) to add a "Account" column, to help identify what account a message is for.

There is a Account Colors add-on that "Associates user-defined colors with accounts and identities. Applies these colors to accounts, identities, folders, message list, message headers and compose headers. Users will always know which accounts/identities they are working with."

There is a Folder Account add-on that lets you associate user accounts and identities with specific folders. That would be useful if you keep all correspondence (sent and received) with a particular person in a dedicated folder, and select tools -> account settings -> account name -> copies & folders -> place a copy in -> place replies in the folder of the message being replied to.
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tanstaafl
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Re: This is why I didn't want to change to IMAP

Post by tanstaafl »

ep2012 wrote:Why would I have had to backup my data on POP? I've never had to do that before. It stays in my inbox & there will probably be some loss of e-mails as the sites are propagading, but with IMAP b/c the stuff is stored on the server, it got lost.
Even if you don't need to worry about your mail its a good idea to occasionally backup your profile if only to backup the address books and settings. Its also a good idea to backup your profile before doing something risky to it.

You would have been fine if you had followed peoples advice and created new accounts rather than editing old ones. There are lots of shortcuts you can take with Thunderbird if you understand how things work. In this case you took a shortcut that worked fine with POP accounts but doesn't work with IMAP accounts, and paid the price. That's why we try to always recommend the safest way, rather than the quickest way, to do something.

By default IMAP accounts also keep a copy of all of the messages in mbox files ("offline folders") on your hard disk the same way POP accounts do. That means if you backup your profile, it also backs up the messages from any IMAP accounts. The significant difference though is those mbox files are sync'd with the corresponding remote folder on the IMAP server, so if you edit an existing account to use a different email provider, the next time it syncs, it deletes them. With a POP account, if you change email providers I believe (but am not 100% sure) it reuses the existing mbox file for the inbox, just adding any new downloaded messages.
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