The question is actually two-fold: (1) From time to time, for no reason that I can discern, Thunderbird spontaneously unsubscribes all (or perhaps most of) my email folders and subfolders. I can of course re-subscribe to them, but since I have a rather large number of folders and subfolders (and subsubfolders ...) this is a lengthy and tedious task. Has anyone any insight into why this unsubscription phenomenon should occur and how one might prevent it from occurring? (2) Failing the last, is there any way to *speed up* the process of re-subscribing? I would like a way of essentially subscribing to *everything*, with a single click (or something like that) and then be able to go through and unsubscribe to those relatively few folders to which I do not wish to subscribe. Groping around on the web I found a way to bypass the "subscribe" system. One goes to Edit -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Advanced, and then unchecks "Show only subscribed folders". This is not too bad, but it leaves me with a number of bits of crap in my folder list that I *do not* wish to see. Things that Thunderbird imposes on the user, like "Journal", "Junk E-Mail", "Notes", "Sent Items", "Sent Messages", etc. (The last two really puzzle me; what function might they serve that is different from the function of the "Sent" folder?) It seems to be impossible to get rid of these, and the only way to mask them is to unsubscribe. But then I need to *subscribe* to all of the stuff that I *do* want to see. P. S. I am running an elderly version of Thunderbird, explicitly 17.0.7, if that is of any relevance.