TB Local Folders not accepting additional emails
Earlier this year I migrated my Live Mail under Windows 7 emails to a new Windows 10 desktop with TB as the email client. I used Import/Export NG to help the process and apart from having to put a lot of effort into organising the Local Folders (called Storage Folders in Live Mail) I was pleased (my only serious grumble is that email account passwords are exposed – why?). But I now have a significant problem as follows:
1. I have set up a Local Folders directory structure that allows me to file emails coming from my Inbox into sensible (for me) topics. I move emails from my Inbox to these folders using the conventional Mouse Select > Mouse Move action and this normally works OK. I presume this is correct.
2. But two of my Local Folders titled ‘General 1’ and ‘General 2’ are now refusing to accept further emails. ‘General 2’ contains about 3000 emails and takes 177MB of storage. If I start TB I can move say 10 emails across from my Inbox, and then say 10 more but then no more are accepted. It’s as if the destination folder has gone ‘read only’. If I restart TB again I can move another 20 emails or so (it varies I think) but then the destination folder blocks. Bizarre and very annoying.
3. For clarity ‘General 1’ and ‘General 2’ are children of a parent folder ‘Received’ which itself is a child of TB ’Local Folders’. What is so bizarre that another folder in the same hierarchy (but which is one level further down) currently contains nearly 7000 emails and occupies 2GB and works really well. I have tried ‘Repair Folder’ with no effect.
I can’t see what I am doing wrong and would appreciate advice before I feel forced to buy MS Outlook and re-migrate everything again! Otherwise TB gives me everything I want and is far better than Live Mail in many respects.
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re :my only serious grumble is that email account passwords are exposed – why?
All computers have the capability of 'User Accounts'. Anyone who uses a computer should have a 'User Account' as the most basic setting for security. All 'User Accounts' can have a password set up and usually the owner of the computer creates their 'User Account' as admin and other accounts as standard.
Thunderbird can be installed on computer and each User Account can use Thunderbird. Thunderbird creates and uses a 'profile name' folder to store all preferences, emails, contacts etc and this by default will be within the User Account Appdata (by default hidden) folder.
This means you would need to know the 'User Account' password in order to access that users desktop. It means without the User Account password you could not see emails, passwords etc. So in effect, only the person with access to the User Account could ever see those passwords.
In addition, there is the facility to set up a 'Master Password'. This automatically hides the display of stored passwords and you need that 'Master Password' in order to view them. Info on Master Password at this link:
Are you moving emails from an IMAP mail account Inbox to 'Local Folders'?
if yes:
This means there will be communication with server for each email. I do not know if you download headers only or download full copies. If you only download headers, then when you select email, it has to be retrieved from server and downloaded to a temp cache on computer. The server will also need to be updated as a 'move' email out of an imap folder means a deletion communication with the server.
I personally prefer to use highlight emails, right click on emails and use 'Copy to' and select folder option. This is because Copy does not send a delete message to server. So if something goes wrong, I will not have lost emails and can repeat the procedure. Yes, it does mean I still need to delete the emails off the server, but only when I'm certain I have got a good copy in Local Folders.
It may also mean the Anti-Virus product is scanning any files being downloaded, which may take longer if attachments/images are in the email. The destination file needs opening and may also get scanned depending upon settings. To rule out the Anti-Virus, do not simply try to disable Anti-Virus as another may be invoked by default. To be certain you would need to start up your computer in 'Safe mode with Networking' and then start Thunderbird. Run in that mode for a reasonable length of time whilst moving/copying emails to see results.
Thunderbird uses mbox text files to store emails. So where you see a folder in 'Local Folders' account, in reality this is a single text file - not a folder. Emails are written to the file one after the other in the order they are placed in the file. Emails are not stored in individual files. It uses more memory to open large files. It may well be the case that you cannot add more emails because in the background, the file is in use writing emails and/or being scanned.
Please note: if you can read emails whilst in 'Offline' mode, then you would know that you have a good copy in 'Local Folders' account.
You may have some very old emails in those 'General' folders. Keeping files small improves performance and is less risky. Perhaps it may help reduce file size if in 'General' folder you created subfolders for eg: 2018, 2019 and move older emails into suitable year folder.
Remember to compact folders on a regular basis to remove all hidden marked as deleted/moved emails.
Also periodically, creates backups of the profile as you may have the only copy of your emails.
Hello Toad-Hall
Many thanks for your interest. Re email passwords I just note that Outlook/Live Mail show passwords under Accounts as ****** rather than in plain text and I can't really understand why TB differs. I could use a Master Password, but can I recover this if I lose it? And frankly I don't need more passwords just now with too many phishing attacks making me nervous and encouraging me to change passwords frequently.
Re my folder problems I am using POP3 to download my emails so do have real copies on my machine. I will read your note in detail this week and see how things go. I have tried the additional folder trick (on my second one now after the first one went 'read only'). I suspect I ought to do a backup in .eml format for security.
I wonder if the issue isn't something to do with the date order of the mails I am moving. I am moving emails with the oldest date from my Inbox, rather than the latest. Maybe MBOX doesn't like that.
Thank you again for your time and expertise which is much appreciated.
Passwords are not shown until you click on the button to show passwords. It does mean you can instantly see your passwords and edit them. As a bonus, I've often used them when I've needed to access a webmail account and wanted to be sure I was using the correct password as I've also got enough passwords to fill a mini dictionary! :)
However, I do not allow anyone access to my desktop as I created an admin User Account and have a password set up to gain access to it. That password is not visible. So no one can even get access to my desktop, hence cannot even see my emails or indeed any document within my entire User Account. I do not use a Master Password as it is unnecessary.
If you forget the Master Password, it can be reset. However, in resetting all stored passwords are removed. After all, what is the point of having a Master Password if it does not protect against access to stored passwords. If you are allowing anyone to access your desktop and access to all documents, emails, etc, then anyone could reset a Master Password and potentially see passwords, so that's why they all get deleted.
As you have a POP mail account then you could easily set up 'Archiving' so you simply select email and click on Archive and it stores everything automatically in an 'Archives' folder within the POP account or create an 'Archives' folder in the 'Local folders' account and point the pop account to use it instead.
You can also choose to keep folder structure, so if I archive by year then the 'Archives' folder will show a year folder and within it folders of same name eg: 'Sent' with all sent emails for that year. If you have a lot of emails you can even store by month and year.
This means you do not even need to create the folders. So if you have email in pop account in a 'Family' folder and you want o archive old mail then that 'Family' folder gets auto created within 'Archives' > 'Year X' > 'Family'. Means it is still easy to locate emails should you have the need.
Perhaps, this may be a good time to choose how to make archiving work for you. It does not matter if it is in the POP or Local Folders as emails are still stored on your computer.
Info on Archiving:
You could save emails individually in .eml format to any folder outside of Thunderbird.
You can also export any Address Book (not 'All Address Books' as that is a virtual one) as LDIF format or .csv format.
But I would still advise you do a backup as explained below as it backs up everything, mail accounts, emails, address books, preferences etc.
Assuming you have everything in the default location, simply do this:
- Exit Thunderbird
- Access the 'Roaming' folder located:
- C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
- Copy the 'Thunderbird' folder to external hardrive, usb of large enough size or suitable cloud location.