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How can I delete one account of two identiicals accounts without deleting any amails

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  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Denney

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In troubleshooting an email problem I had to change the email password. The Thunderbird program would not accept the new password or let me change it in the old account. I could not send emails from the old account. I created a new account using the new password and that works. I want to delete the old account but the article on this forum (see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1215686 ) says that deleting an account deletes the emails too. How can I delete the old non-working account and not delete any emails in the new working account?

In troubleshooting an email problem I had to change the email password. The Thunderbird program would not accept the new password or let me change it in the old account. I could not send emails from the old account. I created a new account using the new password and that works. I want to delete the old account but the article on this forum (see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1215686 ) says that deleting an account deletes the emails too. How can I delete the old non-working account and not delete any emails in the new working account?

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Is old account POP and new account IMAP ? Is it a gmail account ? It is possible that gmail may have been deliberately blocking the old pop account, so updating a password would not resolve anything because gmail needed you to logon to webmail and select to use 'less secure apps'.


Gmail would prefer you to use IMAP and OAuth2 connection security, so they can be a bit of a pain on occasions.

If you want to proceed with removal of old account. Create suitable folders in 'Local Folders' mail account. Highlight/select emails in old account folder Right click on highlighted emails and select 'Copy to' and choose 'Local Folders' and click on folder of choice.

If you can read those copied over emails in offline mode then you know you have a good copy.

then remove the old account.

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Both accounts are IMAP protocol. Neither account is gmail or has anything to do with gmail. History of problem, I got an update to Thunderbird. Thunderbird on this computer stopped getting and sending emails. In troubleshooting the problem I reset the passwords for my emails accounts. I had six accounts on four different servers. Found the problem was that the update reset the email servers addresses to default addresses. I had at the direction of the ISP hand set the addresses to secure addresses a year ago. Once I changed the default addresses to the secure addresses and changed the Saved Password thing I started getting emails, but I could not send emails. When I start Thunderbird now I get "mail server password required' error box. I enter the password and I get "login to account "XXXXXX" failed" error message. I try both old and new passwords and I get the "account login "XXXXXX" failed" error message back. I have even reset the password again, but it takes hours for the server to work through the new password so they can be used. And it still doesn't work. I have three copies of one account that holds the same emails and want to get rid of two of the duplicate accounts to clean things up. I can't be the only one having this problem. Is everyone abandoning Thunderbird?