How can I stop Thunderbird from 'dowloading xxx to all Mail', often thousands of messages which results in 'not responding' error message?
from time to time Thunderbird slows down or stops with the "not responding" message showing. at the bottom left of the screen the words appear "downloading xxx of xxxx to All Mail" or "downloading xxx of xxxx to trash". Often the numbers are very large. With the help of a professional, I have cleaned out large numbers of my files, deleting them from trash, etc. so I do not believe I have such large numbers in my system.
Opaite Mbohovái (8)
Why would you want to see 'All Mail' in Thunderbird in the first place?
I don't care about "All Mail" but I can't get rid of it either - and the same thing happens with "Trash".
Basically you have an IMAP mail account which is synchronized to the server so yes you most certainly have that many mails on Google or they would not synchronize.
To get rid of the 'All Mail' folder you can unsubscribe from it.
In case the menu bar is hidden press Alt or F10 to restore it.
File - Subscribe
Select the Gmail account from the Account drop-down menu.
Uncheck 'All Mail' in the Folder list.
As Matt explained above disable Synchronization for Trash. And I'd probably empty the Trash in the first place.
I have gotten rid of the all mail subscription and think I have disabled synchronization for trash. However, in the process I also lost the contents of a couple of my gmail folders. Is there some way I can see them elsewhere, such as in the IMAP gmail account that is synchronized to Thunderbird?
What Gmail folders?
None of the steps suggested to you would cause loosing other folders contents. So what exactly did you do?
I opened Subscribe, unchecked All Mail, clicked on OK. looked again at folders and all mail was still there. Went back, all mail still unchecked. I think I may have then hit 'unsubscribe' in the menu at the right...thinking that I needed to do that to get rid of all mail, which was gone then. Did not notice that other folders had been emptied - they were still listed, but nothing in them....
Again, what folders?