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safe emails from online provider deletions

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  • Last reply by Stans

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It is confusing to me about saving emails and folders to my PC from let's say an Outlook mail account. Please excuse my ignorance. I use TB extensively. I also save emails to what I thought was a safe subfolder that I created in the imap listing in TB on my PC. However, I was just reading that this is not safe. One should build a sub-folder in Local folders. Can someone please explain Local folders and how to make sure that emails/folders I safe when I store them. EX: When I or Outlook, delete emails and folders from Outlook acct., it does not affect my PC TB emails. This is greatly appreciated. God Bless

It is confusing to me about saving emails and folders to my PC from let's say an Outlook mail account. Please excuse my ignorance. I use TB extensively. I also save emails to what I thought was a safe subfolder that I created in the imap listing in TB on my PC. However, I was just reading that this is not safe. One should build a sub-folder in Local folders. Can someone please explain Local folders and how to make sure that emails/folders I safe when I store them. EX: When I or Outlook, delete emails and folders from Outlook acct., it does not affect my PC TB emails. This is greatly appreciated. God Bless

Chosen solution

Folders created under the special Local Folders account in Thunderbird are NOT synchronised with the server. They exist in Thunderbird only. IMAP folders are online or remote folders. They exist both on the remote mail server and Thunderbird. What happens to them on the server is mirrored in Thunderbird and vice versa. This is what IMAP synchronisation is all about. If you want to keep a "permanent" copy of emails that won't be affected by actions taken on the server copies, use a local folder (a folder created under the Local Folders account) to store them. You take the responsibility securing locally stored messages. If your PC gets compromised in any way, you face a higher risk of permanently losing the locally stored emails. Unless you define what you mean by "safe", I don't see how you consider your PC to be safer than Microsoft (Outlook) servers.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization

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Chosen Solution

Folders created under the special Local Folders account in Thunderbird are NOT synchronised with the server. They exist in Thunderbird only. IMAP folders are online or remote folders. They exist both on the remote mail server and Thunderbird. What happens to them on the server is mirrored in Thunderbird and vice versa. This is what IMAP synchronisation is all about. If you want to keep a "permanent" copy of emails that won't be affected by actions taken on the server copies, use a local folder (a folder created under the Local Folders account) to store them. You take the responsibility securing locally stored messages. If your PC gets compromised in any way, you face a higher risk of permanently losing the locally stored emails. Unless you define what you mean by "safe", I don't see how you consider your PC to be safer than Microsoft (Outlook) servers.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization