IMAP to POP3

[rabbit]

I set up 4 or 5 email accounts with my ISP as IMAP thinking that I might want to access mail on an iPhone. Now I'm getting squirrelly messages about the ISP server status and requests for email passwords constantly. I used to use POP3 for incoming mail. I didn't have these problems. I suspect that the IMAP options sync'ing that goes on is causing my issues; so I'd like to go back to POP3 for incoming mail.

As I've tried to troubleshoot the issues, I discovered that I'm not getting all of the mail from my ISP's server all the time. I've used webmail to confirm this.

I found a web article that said you cannot directly edit the mail server type in Thunderbird confirming what I had learned by trial and error. The article went on to say that all one had to do was to set up a new account with the same email address, pw, etc using POP3. I tried this and Thunderbird will not let me set up a second account with the same email address even though the mail type variable is different.

My next step will be to delete all of my email account in Thunderbird then set them up as POP3 accounts. Before I do this, I'd like to know if it will be possible to recover the archives, etc for the accounts for the period in which I had used IMAP mail type.

Anyone? Please and thank you!!!!

[tanstaafl]

You can disable IMAP synching by unchecking "keep messages in all folders in this account on this computer" in the accounts synchronization & storage settings.

Any email app you use on your iPhone would use IMAP accounts. Does it have similar problems?

" I discovered that I'm not getting all of the mail from my ISP's server all the time. I've used webmail to confirm this."
Is the missing mail in the webmail inbox and ignored by Thunderbird? Anything unusual about it or any pattern such as all of the missing messages have large attachments?

"I tried this and Thunderbird will not let me set up a second account with the same email address even though the mail type variable is different."

I've had no problem doing that. Plenty of people in this forum have done that. What is the full text of the error message you get?

Try again using safe mode (help -> restart with add-ons disabled) to see if its due to a side effect of some add-on that doesn't play nicely with your current version of Thunderbird.

Does your ISP use Yahoo for its email server?

[rabbit]

If I take a screen shot is there any way to attach it to a post here?

[tanstaafl]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Posting_a_scr ... _the_forum