So, what's going on here? Is the comcast account becoming full? Are you worried that they'll lose your messages? Are you planning on moving to another email provider?

We do occasionally get users saying they want to "back up" an account, but often, to be brutally frank, their messages would be safer left on the provider's server than moved onto the user's own computer and therefore dependent on local backup practices in case of equipment or user failure.

The way to get Thunderbird to make permanent local copies of messages is to copy or move the messages to the Local Folders account. Some users appear to have success by simply dragging and droppping folders from the original account into Local Folders. I am not comfortable with this; if you have folders nested within folders, you could be asking it to move arbitrarily large numbers of messages and folders, and email is not good at this. I would manually create the required folders under Local Folders, and move the contents folder by folder. I'd do this in tranches, moving no more than 500 or so messages at any time. I'd use multiselect and right-click|move to. It's cleaner and safer than drag and drop.

I have also seen recent discussion that suggested that Thunderbird doesn't issue the commands necessary to traverse deeply-nested folders on an IMAP mail server. If this is so, then blind reliance on drag-and-drop of folders is likely to leave some behind.

Having moved them into Local Folders, you'll be able to access your messages in Thunderbird. You can then back them up by making copies of Thunderbird's profile. Sure, you can export them, but converting email messages into discrete files loses all the interconnectedness inherent in email conversations.

Thank you. I am doing this because my Comcast email program is the biggest user of storage on my iphone, and I am no longer able to store many photos on the phone because of the 630MB Comcast is using.

If I could just use Comcast email on my iphone without having all of my folders of stored email also there, I think I'd be ok. Comcast (on my desktop) says I am using 5GB of email usage.

I would like to delete some of my folders of emails on Comcast, therefore freeing up storage. In order to do that, I'd have to have the folders stored on my desktop.

Maybe I'm going about solving the iphone problem in the wrong way, but I can't figure out anything else.

Thank you, Joan

Umm, I don't use any Apple hardware myself. I have been quite impressed by the mail applications on Android, where you set the number of days' worth of email to download. The older material remains available but you have to wait to download older messages before being able to read them.

So I'd urge you to look for similar settings in the mail app on your iPhone.

Apple get some bad press here because their mail app tends to consume a large number of IMAP connections. I do hope it isn't equally poorly behaved in all other matters.

Apple and Comcast don't play well together, or so the companies have both told me. I had to download the Comcast app in order to have my email on the iphone. It works fine, but sucks up to much of my storage. It doesn't give me any option for downloading older messages.

Once I move folders into TB Local Folders, are they saved on my computer? If not, how do I download them? And, where do they download to (how do I locate them?).

Thank you so much for your help! Joan

joafla said

Once I move folders into TB Local Folders, are they saved on my computer?

If not, how do I download them? And, where do they download to (how do I locate them?).

For backup purposes, you should look at making a copy of Thunderbird's profile.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

You are being so helpful. I just keep getting blocked in my efforts to find the files of Local Folders on my C drive. The instructions in your link were to do this: How to find your profile

Click on the menu button or menu bar. From the Help menu, click Troubleshooting Information. In the Application Basics section, Profile Folder, click on Open Folder. The Windows Explorer window will show the name of the profile as well as the path to it.

That progression of choices doesn't happen on my computer (I have Windows 7 Professional). I've searched the C drive for Local Folders, and come up with nothing. I can find the TB program files but not the Profile (the link made the distinction clear).

I do see that I can put an email in Local Folders, then delete it from my Comcast email, and it remains on TB. That is great! I just want to be able to access it without going to TB - well, I'll still access it through TB, but I want to see where it is.

Thank you for your patience. Joan

So, at what point does the sequence of instructions fail for you?

Really the location of the profile is important only from the point of view of making a backup of it. Much of its contents are effectively unreadable, even when you know where they are. Email is best handled by an email client.

The profile is hidden. You can browse to it if you know a specific pathname to a file. Ordinarily I'd say you need to enable the viewing of hidden files, but I am being told that in Windows 10 even this isn't reliable.

I will stop looking for it since it wouldn't be usable to me. Thank you very much for your help! I will trust TB to keep my folders of emails safely stored. Joan