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Why does thunderbird download thousands of messages even though my mailbox is current?

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cp321

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About once a week, thunderbird says, "downloading 1 of 4985 messages" (as an example, but the number varies.) Why does it do this when my mailbox is current and already has all the emails in it? It takes forever and slows everything down as it downloads 2, 3, 4, all the way until it gets to 4985. Does this have something to do with compacting folders?

About once a week, thunderbird says, "downloading 1 of 4985 messages" (as an example, but the number varies.) Why does it do this when my mailbox is current and already has all the emails in it? It takes forever and slows everything down as it downloads 2, 3, 4, all the way until it gets to 4985. Does this have something to do with compacting folders?

All Replies (2)

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I think you will find it has something to do with your provider changing the indexes used to identify emails on the server. IMAP works to synchronize only wile there is a common way to describe each email. If the server allocates a new reference for an email, then it is downloaded all over again.

What mail provider is this?

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It's yahoo mail. Why would it allocate a new reference? Nothing changed. And my mailbox doesn't change. It just says it's downloading.