I want to know if I can set them up in TBird so that it will not pull those emails from the server because they are already being pulled into gmail and then delivered to TBird via gmail and if I can simply just use them to send from when I do need to use TBird?

Let's get this straight. Somehow you get all your accounts to forward to the gmail account. In Thunderbird you receive all your messages in the gmail account, so don't want to set it up to access the accounts directly?

(Why forward them all to gmail?)

Have you registered these accounts with your gmail account? This will allow you to send "on behalf of" using the gmail smtp servers. I think the final bit would be to set up your other accounts as additional identities in Thunderbird under the gmail account, then you can use them as "from:" addresses.

I fail to see what advantage you obtain from all this forwarding to gmail. I run several accounts myself, and use one gmail IMAP-connected account to file stuff that will be useful to me and is thus available to any of my computers. But I can do this by simple manual moving or filter-based moving in Thunderbird.

I have one account that I operate a bit like yours, because its servers use traditional imap/143 and smtp/25 ports, which are blocked by the server/firewall at my place of work. By forwarding incoming messages to another (gmx) account that uses imap/993 and smtp/465 I can make use of this account at my place of work.

Zenos said

Let's get this straight. Somehow you get all your accounts to forward to the gmail account. In Thunderbird you receive all your messages in the gmail account, so don't want to set it up to access the accounts directly? (Why forward them all to gmail?)

Because only some of the accounts actually belong to me. I am a virtual assistant, and I work with several clients whom I have my own email within their company for or I answer their email directly for them and these to are being accessed via my gmail account. This makes my life so much easier. These accounts are registered with all different entities. I also have a team that works with me and they are simply granted access to the gmail account and in this way they to have access to ALL of these emails and it's again a huge benefit to me and my team to have it all set up in this way.

Zenos said

Have you registered these accounts with your gmail account? This will allow you to send "on behalf of" using the gmail smtp servers. I think the final bit would be to set up your other accounts as additional identities in Thunderbird under the gmail account, then you can use them as "from:" addresses.

I'm not certain what exactly you mean by register with gmail? I have them set up as being forwarded to gmail because I can then set them up on gmail's end as "Send mail as". I don't use gmail for my email addy, and prefer for my other email identities to be shown when sending and receiving email.

Zenos said

I fail to see what advantage you obtain from all this forwarding to gmail. I run several accounts myself, and use one gmail IMAP-connected account to file stuff that will be useful to me and is thus available to any of my computers. But I can do this by simple manual moving or filter-based moving in Thunderbird.

I explained the forwarding reasoning above, but in regards to the filtering I already have all that set up in gmail. I receive 1000's of email daily and do not desire to reset up everything in TBird which is why I opted to add only the gmail account to TBird as an IMAP account so that it would automatically pull all my settings down from gmail. No need to reestablish all the filters this way.

Zenos said

I have one account that I operate a bit like yours, because its servers use traditional imap/143 and smtp/25 ports, which are blocked by the server/firewall at my place of work. By forwarding incoming messages to another (gmx) account that uses imap/993 and smtp/465 I can make use of this account at my place of work.

Since I own my own business this is not an issue for me. I don't have gmail blocked on my servers.

Therefore, the question still remains. How do I simply add them so that I they won't pull email from the server, but will allow me to send from them? Do you have a page set up on here somewhere that will give me instructions to do this? I'm usually really good at following them. Or can this even be done?

Thanks, Rhonda

re: I'm not certain what exactly you mean by register with gmail? I have them set up as being forwarded to gmail

• https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en

My experience with a regular gmail account is that you set it up with a specific smtp account in Thunderbird. That means it will have a gmail address associated with it, and it will need that gmail account's password. The trouble with using it to send email, in the default configuration, is that it will substitute whatever address/identity you use when sending a message with the gmail address associated with the gmail smtp server. So if a user has 5 gmail accounts, he needs 5 separate smtp settings to ensure each account has its own correct "from:" address in messages he sends. But you say you "set them up on gmail's end as "Send mail as" " so you appear to have this covered. I think that's the "registration" I had in mind.

By and large, Thunderbird won't let you use arbitrary "from:" addresses. It insists that you use one of your installed accounts. So if you use gmail to send messages, they will all appear to come from one of your gmail identities.

The way to add arbitrary email addresses to Thunderbird is to add them as Identities. Tools|Settings|{select your google account}|Account Settings→Manage Identities.

Here you can add the addresses you want to use as "from:" addresses. ordinarily it would also allow you to manage aliases for incoming mail.

I use this very feature to forward spam on to Knujon, using the address they gave me to send to. It's real address in that you can send messages to it, but it's not an address for which I have access to its Inbox etc. But sending messages "from:" the Knujon address helps me keep track of sent material, and also allows messages collated from several incoming accounts to be sent in one job, with a single independent "from:" address avoiding any artificial association with any of my "real" accounts.