Case of the disappearing incoming email (or a Tale of Two Computers).
I have a desktop computer with POP and my laptop has IMAP. Both use Thunderbird and the ISP is Comcast. The desktop runs Windows 10; the laptop, Windows 11.
I recently noticed that I was not receiving emails from a friend on the POP machine, and wondered why they disappeared. It turned out that they were tagged as Junk and sent to Junk folder on the IMAP laptop. I set up the mail filters on the IMAP laptop to move these messages to my inbox if from this particular sender and if on my personal address book. This sometimes does not happen, so they are in the junk folder and never arrive on the desktop POP computer. My first question is whether keeping the laptop turned off as much as possible will keep this problem from occurring. Normally the spam filtering works well on Thunderbird IMAP, but false positives like this seem hard to handle). Second question is whether the junk folder on Thunderbird IMAP account can be disabled, or removed (Comcast webmail does not have a specific Junk folder, but does have a spam folder).
Finally, for some reason I have two personal address books, the first one being empty. I don't understand how this came to be, but it looks like I cannot delete the first one.
Modified by John Stewart
Chosen solution
Thanks, David!
I have traced the path of one of these mis-classified emails to the SPAM folder on Xfinity.net. I was able to mark it as "not spam" but then I found out that the filters and other spam/ junk controls on that website are difficult to locate, the guidance is terrible, and it looks like they have a spam control that the user cannot edit to exclude false positives. They also have a "Safe List" that the user can set up, but that excludes all messages not on it. None of that is necessary if it's only one friend's message that's being tagged as junk.
Your advice is well taken, as I find the filtering is easier to do on T-Bird, and have disabled the spam filter on Comcast/Xfinity because of its high false-positive rate.
Another question, if you have a ready answer: If I changed the POP account on my desktop to IMAP, would I have to change my email address? This doesn't seem to follow, since I have the same email address on both computers now.
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You could disable junk control on the IMAP PC, but the only way to ensure consistency on both PCs would be to use IMAP on both.
Chosen Solution
Thanks, David!
I have traced the path of one of these mis-classified emails to the SPAM folder on Xfinity.net. I was able to mark it as "not spam" but then I found out that the filters and other spam/ junk controls on that website are difficult to locate, the guidance is terrible, and it looks like they have a spam control that the user cannot edit to exclude false positives. They also have a "Safe List" that the user can set up, but that excludes all messages not on it. None of that is necessary if it's only one friend's message that's being tagged as junk.
Your advice is well taken, as I find the filtering is easier to do on T-Bird, and have disabled the spam filter on Comcast/Xfinity because of its high false-positive rate.
Another question, if you have a ready answer: If I changed the POP account on my desktop to IMAP, would I have to change my email address? This doesn't seem to follow, since I have the same email address on both computers now.
On IMAP, changing does not affect the email id. To make the switch, you need to create an IMAP account from scratch. After you have that working, you can then delete the POP account. In doing so, you will want to specify keeping the data, as any previously downloaded messages will be lost if your completely delete everything from the POP account. My suggestion is to always do a profile backup before any major change.