One way to find out: - click help>troubleshootinginformation - scroll down to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder' - you will now be in the profile. If the account was POP, then look in the Mail folder, otherwise, look in the Imapmail folder

Thanks David, away from my system for the rest of the day (13:25 here on 15th !) but I will try this later & report back.

I came across this message from March 2022 - "I read at AskLeo that I could use Thunderbird with Gmail as a way to backup my Gmail emails to my computer. I then want to backup the Thunderbird folder using a backup program to save the emails to an external drive.

Why will folk not just use the Google takeout service? Relatively quick, very comprehensive and you end up with a fairly standard MBOX file that google compress for you that you can store as a backup.

Thunderbird can natively read mbox files, but so can many other mail clients, if you ever need to access the backup. So why involve Thunderbird in a Gmail backup at all? I just fail to understand that when Gmail offers good, simple, robust and fit for purpose tools.

Thanks for your comments Matt.

I have used Google Takeout to an extent in the past but have been put off by the sheer size of the files created - for example, a mail folder of 120 emails, when downloaded gave me an mbox file of 165Mb (127 when compressed), nor did I find it a particularly speedy process.

I don't really understand the sizing & structures. My All Mail folder in gmail has > 26,000 mails going back several years, but organised by topic (folder/label) rather than by date. The Google One storage page indicates that gmail is taking just 1.68Gb of my Drive.

I probably retain far too many emails but I do like being able to access all my records and search mails without having to "access" a backup.

I am also coming to the view that I should perhaps pay for private and secure email and move away from free services like Gmail that monetize my personal data. Google is not an organisation I feel very good about.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/26/20977968/google-graveyard-products-shut-down-dead-not-supported-discontinues-spring-cleaning

A combination of, for example, Proton Mail or Fastmail with a desktop client like Thunderbird, would allow me a bit more freedom to take a considered approach so I'm testing a few options to see where it takes me.

One way to find out: - click help>troubleshootinginformation - scroll down to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder' - you will now be in the profile. If the account was POP, then look in the Mail folder, otherwise, look in the Imapmail folder

Hi David at 'profile folder' I have 'profile directory' but the 'open directory' button does nothing !

When I navigate from 'Home' to '.thunderbird', click on 'xxx..xxx.default-release', there is a folder 'Imapmail' containing just an '.msf' file. There is also 'Mail' folder but it's empty ?

??, Jack

Thanks for your comments Matt. I have used Google Takeout to an extent in the past but have been put off by the sheer size of the files created - for example, a mail folder of 120 emails, when downloaded gave me an mbox file of 165Mb (127 when compressed), nor did I find it a particularly speedy process.

When you are tediously trying to work out which mails you "missed" in your imap backup you will decide the Google process is positively rocket powered.

The storage file system in Thunderbird is exactly the same as the google one for mail takeout. So if you thought their files were large, they will be exactly the same size as your Thunderbird ones.

I don't really understand the sizing & structures. My All Mail folder in gmail has > 26,000 mails going back several years, but organised by topic (folder/label) rather than by date. The Google One storage page indicates that gmail is taking just 1.68Gb of my Drive.

Just how does google store an email? I do not know. I do know Microsoft outlook has always pulled it to bits, converted attachments back to files and lumped them all in a database format in the PST file. It is quite probable Google do something different. One of the realities of mail attachments is they are around thirty percent larger that their file equivalents. It is a side effect of the MIME encoding of the binary data.

I am also coming to the view that I should perhaps pay for private and secure email and move away from free services like Gmail that monetize my personal data. Google is not an organisation I feel very good about. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/26/20977968/google-graveyard-products-shut-down-dead-not-supported-discontinues-spring-cleaning A combination of, for example, Proton Mail or Fastmail with a desktop client like Thunderbird, would allow me a bit more freedom to take a considered approach so I'm testing a few options to see where it takes me.

I would suggest you rethink your proton ideas. they get a lot of press, but you can not get mail onto your desktop without their "bridge" running on your device. The bridge is basically a local mail server as far as mail clients are concerned, plenty of those with issues on this forum for you to research. Or you could check out the issues their git hub site for development of the bridge. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues

Add to that they offer to send encrypted mail even to those that do not have encryption certificates, and you find they email a link to a web page on their server because the thing about symmetric encryption is both parties need to have and use their own certificates. So anyone claiming to do it without is mostly not doing what they lead you to think they are doing.

You might be better served by mailfence, I personally did a trial of their service and it appeared Ok, I failed to sign up for the paid account, but it was closer to a paid reality I felt and you get your own domain with the paid tiers. https://mailfence.com/#pricing If you sign up for it via Thunderbird the project gets a few cents as well, but that is not why I suggest them.

jvwhyte said

When I navigate from 'Home' to '.thunderbird', click on 'xxx..xxx.default-release', there is a folder 'Imapmail' containing just an '.msf' file.

Check that the account is set to actually store messages remotely. Account settings > synchronization and storage ensure the keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer is checked. Then check the advanced button to make sure the global setting is being applied on a per folder basis.

Ensure Synchronize all message regardless of age is checked under the disk space heading.

Thanks again Matt for a seriously comprehensive answer.

I was looking for the IMAP folder in the wrong place - found it, eventually, at

~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/.thunderbird/0q38jrr5.default-release/ImapMail/imap.gmail.com

and through Tools-Export backed up to a zipped file Thunderbird_profile-backup of 4.5Gb very quickly indeed ! Archive Manager refused to open this file but I may investigate a little further.

In the help notes, there is a mechanism for saving profiles over 2GB. Using copy + paste, I copied the folder xx.default-release to an external USB disc; seemed to work although I had to skip over a "symbolic link" which could not be copied. The copy was very fast indeed - just over 4.5Gb.

I won't try a restore just yet until I understand what the symbolic link was and how to ensure it gets onto the backup.

I will "tediously (perhaps tomorrow)" check that all the gmail folders are represented in the copied files.

Thanks for the comments about Proton - I have been using a free account for a couple of months, and I am not comfortable with it. Mailfence looks rather complex and maybe a bit too technical for me. I have read a lot of the user guide type info on Fastmail, and given they operate a free 30 days before "cashing in", I may well give that a try when I have worked with Thunderbird for a week or so.

I have been retired for 18 years now and do struggle a bit with many technical terms. I've been using Linux off + on for a while but have to confess that I have not made much progress. Day to day, I use a MacBook Air M1 along with my iPhone & iPad but to keep the brain cells ticking over I have an antique iMAC (2009 model) running Linux Mint which has loads of disc space and is helping to wean me off too much reliance on online storage from the dreaded Google and some others. The end point is to have a steady backup regime of all my data, independently.

I just signed my wife up to GMX, she retired last month and no longer has corporate email. GMX is a free privacy respecting email provider and is a subsidiary of United Internet AG a German Internet services company. GMX is Very popular in Europe and offers offers POP and IMAP access to mail.

Just as an aside, symbolic links in Windows profiles generally end in disaster. Not sure about the Linux world. I keep installing Linux and using it for a while. But really the year of Linux on the desktop has still not arrived, it is just so ideologically driven that you have to try all these distributions and desktop environments and just when you think you have it worked out it, that distribution has no support for some of the hardware. So back to Windows i go. I just can not bring myself to pay extra for Apple, just because it is Apple. I leave that to the wife.