Downloading Many Messages onto Local Server
I have over 200,000 emails on a gmail account I'm hoping to sync with Thunderbird. My goal is to have them all downloaded onto a local server on my computer so I can refer to them all offline. I've been periodically pressings "get messages" which used to download messages 1000 at a time (I'm not sure why it doesn't continually sync with my inbox!) Though, sometimes it would download 2-3 at a time which was frustrating and fairly futile. Now, it's stopped downloading entirely. How do I keep syncing my inbox?
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It looks like nothing is happening at the moment, but when I try to go offline I get this error message: "The account [email] is being processed. Please wait until processing is complete to get messages."
Gmail has bandwidth limits for IMAP/POP access. You'll be hitting that limit shortly after sync has started if your internet connection is fast. See https://support.google.com/a/answer/1071518
This is a very basic requirement and easy to do.
Go to Thunderbird -> Account Settings -> Server Settings. Select the checkbox "Check for new messages every ____ minutes. Set it to 5-8 minutes.
Now the issue is the speed of download. You will notice that the speed of download is reduced as this is limited by Gmail.
1. If you want an online backup of emails, then bear with this speed.
2. If you do not want the emails any longer on Gmail then delete the emails already downloaded (check the date). You can search "before:<date in format yyyy/mm/dd" Eg: "before:2021/11/04" in Gmail and Select all and delete. Then empty Thrash.
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Upon doing Step 2 you will notice thunderbird is downloading email faster.