Thunderbird IMAP/Gmail scares me

[petisjioweelsha]

Normally, I use Gmail through the website. But, I have decided that I should have a full copy of all of my mail on my local machine.

In perusing some of the info about IMAP it seems like it only transfers part of a message and then only gets a full message when it needs to actually display the full message.
Obviously, this would not be satisfactory for my needs.

Then there is the whole issue of a change on the local machine affecting the copy on the server.

At some point, I would envision myself deleting the massive archive of messages stored on Gmail and just keeping them on the local machine. But, I would like to have the option and ability to re-load them back onto Gmail in the future if I want to...

Am I being unrealistic?

 

[tersono]

You're not understanding how IMAP works.

If you delete emails from the website, they will also disappear from your local cache. The whole idea with IMAP is that the mail store remains the same no matter where you log in from (website, different computers, phone etc). The only way around that is to archive off those emails you want to save into an independant local mailbox before deleting any messages from the online store.

 

[Airforcekid]

Pop will keep it on the server and your local computer gmail supports it if you disable imap. It's probably your better bet if you want to be extra safe with backups.

 

[rocknblogger]

You can set Thunderbird to move messages to any folder you choose. So instead of sending messages that you delete in Thunderbird to trash on the server you can create a label called TB trash. This way you'll delete them locally but still have them on the server just in case.

You can also just "mark" it as deleted.

One little tip. Two years ago I woke up to find my gmail account empty. All of my email was gone. Everything from the date I created the account was gone.

Luckily I was able to recover about 80% but I learned a valuable lesson.

I created a new gmail account called mygmailcopies and I set up my primary account to forward every message that comes in to this new account.

It's a free and easy way to backup your gmail account.

 

[petisjioweelsha]

You're not understanding how IMAP works.

I certainly don't!

If you delete emails from the website, they will also disappear from your local cache. The whole idea with IMAP is that the mail store remains the same no matter where you log in from (website, different computers, phone etc). The only way around that is to archive off those emails you want to save into an independant local mailbox before deleting any messages from the online store.

Any tips for how to do this?

 

[rocknblogger]

I certainly don't!



Any tips for how to do this?

Just create a folder under "Local Folders" and copy any important email to that folder.

If you receive email from a particular sender that you always want to keep, you can create filters to automatically copy those emails to the folders you create.

 

[petisjioweelsha]

Just create a folder under "Local Folders" and copy any important email to that folder.

If you receive email from a particular sender that you always want to keep, you can create filters to automatically copy those emails to the folders you create.

Cool.

I envision keeping everything, so I guess I should just filter all mail into a local Thunderbird folder. Then I can delete messages from the gmail website periodically and still be sure that I have a local copy.

Would that still allow me to load mail back onto the gmail servers if I ever decided that I wanted to do that in the future?