How do I organise my emails?
I am trying to re-organize my emails. I have several customers, with a 4 year history. The emails include warranty information and purchase / work order histories. I need to keep all these emails. I do not necessarily need immediate access to them, just so long as I have access to them when I need. (I would not mind storing them somehow in a folder on my hard drive, and import it when I needed to or whatever)
So, I want to organize it so that I have a folder (customer name) and sub folders (2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019) and move those emails to the associated folders.
My issue is that when I do move them, they reappear in the original folder, and if I delete THOSE then they disappear from both folders.
How do I do what I want to do? Thanks
Chosen solution
re :Moved folders from inbox to all mail and back You cannot Move an email out of 'All Mail' into the imap Inbox, that is just applying and removing a label called Inbox. So email will be in 'All Mail' and 'Inbox' or only in 'All Mail'. But you can move an email out of imap 'All Mail' folder into Thunderbird 'Local Folders' mail account. But that will delete it entirely off the server.
Gmail keep all your emails in 'All Mail' folder. That means everything you send and receive. The whole lot. 'All Mail' is also the archive used when labels are deleted but not the actual email.
Gmail applies labels to those emails in 'All Mail' so you can see them in a manner you are more accustomed to seeing eg: Inbox, Sent Mail, Spam etc. By applying labels, this means one email can be shown in any number of folders. So, you could have a specific email shown in a 'Client Name' folder, but that email may be an order, so it could also have a label applied so it is also seen in the 'Orders' folder.
Gmail has more than one method of deleting. Any email that is deleted AND put into the Gmail imap Trash/Bin folder, will be auto deleted from that TRash folder after a period usually 30 days. When this occurs, that email is deleted completely from the 'All Mail' folder. This means all views of that email will disappear from all folders you could previously see it in.
If you delete an email, but you do not put that email into gmails imap 'Trash' folder, then you are only deleting a label. This means the email has been 'archived' by gmail and so will only be in the 'All Mail' folder unless you have applied other labels. Understanding the difference in deleting a label and deleting an email is important. This has long since confused people as to why deleted emails are still in All Mail.
On the imap gmail account: You could create a folder and call it '2016' Inside that folder you could have several subfolders - perhaps each one is for each Client. eg: Client Anon You do need to check you have subscribed to see folders and subfolders.
eg: Gmail imap account > 2016 > > Client Anon All emails Received/Sent from 'Client Anon' that have a year date of '2016' can be moved into the 'Client Anon' folder.
This means all the emails are still in the 'All Mail' folder, but they have labels applied to show them in eg: 'Client Anon' folder.
Once you have sorted all the emails for the year 2016 into all various Client folders, you could then unsubscribe from seeing the '2016' folder.
Emails are still on server. 2016 folder is still on server. It is just not showing up in your thunderbird gmail imap account. This means you can easily see the emails if you use webmail or in Thunderbird if you choose to 'subscribe' to see the 2016 folder and relevant sub folders.
I would advise you do not need to subscribe to see the 'All Mail' folder because it is only a duplicate of everything you see any way.
If storing emails on the server is effecting your server quota, then you need to consider getting copies into Thunderbird 'Local Folders' mail account so they get stored on your computer. Then you can delete emails off server and reduce the quota.
Make sure you are actually synchronising folder for offline use and downloading full copies of emails - not just headers. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization#w_configuring-synchronization-and-disk-space-usage
Menu icon > File > Offline > download/sync now.
Select to go to offline mode.
Then in offline mode - it stops any synchronising of imap folders whilst copying a load of emails.
Create folders in 'Local Folders' mail account.
Select/highlight emails in an imap folder
right click on highlighted emails and choose 'Copy to' and select the 'Local folders' folder you created for them.
I suggest you use 'Copy to' because 'Move to' will action a delete off server and if something went wrong in transit you could lose the email.
If you can read emails in offline mode in the Local Folders account then you have successfully got copies stored onto your computer that are not linked to the imap account.
At this point, before you go back to online mode, I would advise you create a backup of your profile name folder - the server only keeps one copy and Thunderbird Local Folders is only one copy. No matter how you put, you only have the one copy, so always have a backup regardless of using Imap, Pop or Local Folders. Never consider an imap account to be a backup copy because the folders sycnhronise with server - in effect, they are one and the same.
After creating a backed up... You could then choose to delete all the copied emails in the imap account folders. Put them into the subscribed gmail trash folder.
When you go back to online mode, folders will synchronise and the server will get updated.
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Which kind of account are you using (POP, IMAP...?), and which Thunderbird version? Did you try organizing your folder structure inside "Local folders"? Does it work if you move your messages in there?
Gmail account. Moved folders from inbox to all mail and back. No luck.
Chosen Solution
re :Moved folders from inbox to all mail and back You cannot Move an email out of 'All Mail' into the imap Inbox, that is just applying and removing a label called Inbox. So email will be in 'All Mail' and 'Inbox' or only in 'All Mail'. But you can move an email out of imap 'All Mail' folder into Thunderbird 'Local Folders' mail account. But that will delete it entirely off the server.
Gmail keep all your emails in 'All Mail' folder. That means everything you send and receive. The whole lot. 'All Mail' is also the archive used when labels are deleted but not the actual email.
Gmail applies labels to those emails in 'All Mail' so you can see them in a manner you are more accustomed to seeing eg: Inbox, Sent Mail, Spam etc. By applying labels, this means one email can be shown in any number of folders. So, you could have a specific email shown in a 'Client Name' folder, but that email may be an order, so it could also have a label applied so it is also seen in the 'Orders' folder.
Gmail has more than one method of deleting. Any email that is deleted AND put into the Gmail imap Trash/Bin folder, will be auto deleted from that TRash folder after a period usually 30 days. When this occurs, that email is deleted completely from the 'All Mail' folder. This means all views of that email will disappear from all folders you could previously see it in.
If you delete an email, but you do not put that email into gmails imap 'Trash' folder, then you are only deleting a label. This means the email has been 'archived' by gmail and so will only be in the 'All Mail' folder unless you have applied other labels. Understanding the difference in deleting a label and deleting an email is important. This has long since confused people as to why deleted emails are still in All Mail.
On the imap gmail account: You could create a folder and call it '2016' Inside that folder you could have several subfolders - perhaps each one is for each Client. eg: Client Anon You do need to check you have subscribed to see folders and subfolders.
eg: Gmail imap account > 2016 > > Client Anon All emails Received/Sent from 'Client Anon' that have a year date of '2016' can be moved into the 'Client Anon' folder.
This means all the emails are still in the 'All Mail' folder, but they have labels applied to show them in eg: 'Client Anon' folder.
Once you have sorted all the emails for the year 2016 into all various Client folders, you could then unsubscribe from seeing the '2016' folder.
Emails are still on server. 2016 folder is still on server. It is just not showing up in your thunderbird gmail imap account. This means you can easily see the emails if you use webmail or in Thunderbird if you choose to 'subscribe' to see the 2016 folder and relevant sub folders.
I would advise you do not need to subscribe to see the 'All Mail' folder because it is only a duplicate of everything you see any way.
If storing emails on the server is effecting your server quota, then you need to consider getting copies into Thunderbird 'Local Folders' mail account so they get stored on your computer. Then you can delete emails off server and reduce the quota.
Make sure you are actually synchronising folder for offline use and downloading full copies of emails - not just headers. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization#w_configuring-synchronization-and-disk-space-usage
Menu icon > File > Offline > download/sync now.
Select to go to offline mode.
Then in offline mode - it stops any synchronising of imap folders whilst copying a load of emails.
Create folders in 'Local Folders' mail account.
Select/highlight emails in an imap folder
right click on highlighted emails and choose 'Copy to' and select the 'Local folders' folder you created for them.
I suggest you use 'Copy to' because 'Move to' will action a delete off server and if something went wrong in transit you could lose the email.
If you can read emails in offline mode in the Local Folders account then you have successfully got copies stored onto your computer that are not linked to the imap account.
At this point, before you go back to online mode, I would advise you create a backup of your profile name folder - the server only keeps one copy and Thunderbird Local Folders is only one copy. No matter how you put, you only have the one copy, so always have a backup regardless of using Imap, Pop or Local Folders. Never consider an imap account to be a backup copy because the folders sycnhronise with server - in effect, they are one and the same.
After creating a backed up... You could then choose to delete all the copied emails in the imap account folders. Put them into the subscribed gmail trash folder.
When you go back to online mode, folders will synchronise and the server will get updated.
re :My issue is that when I do move them, they reappear in the original folder, What do you call the 'original folder' ? If you mean 'All Mail' then that is normal because everything is stored in 'All Mail'.
If you have:
Gmail imap account
> Client Anon
> > 2016
> > 2017
Are the emails originally stored in 'Client Anon' ? You have created new subfolders for each year? In Thunderbird, have you subscribed to see those newly created subfolders?
If you logon to gmail webmail account, can you see the Client name folder and can you see the newly created year subfolders ?