This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Buscar en Ayuda

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

I have just installed Thunderbird but it's downloading all my e-mails since 2007!

  • 1 respuesta
  • 2 tienen este problema
  • 10 visitas
  • Última respuesta de gk0moz

more options

My old desktop computer used Outlook for the e-mail programme.

I have just got a new laptop and installed mozilla thunderbird to use as my e-mail programme.

When I clicked on "get mail" it started with downloading e-mails from 2007, apparently it was "message 1 of 11,247" or some other very large number. How do I stop it downloading all those old e-mails?

The default programme on this computer (I guess it's part of Windows 8.1) doesn't do this.

Thanks, Petra

My old desktop computer used Outlook for the e-mail programme. I have just got a new laptop and installed mozilla thunderbird to use as my e-mail programme. When I clicked on "get mail" it started with downloading e-mails from 2007, apparently it was "message 1 of 11,247" or some other very large number. How do I stop it downloading all those old e-mails? The default programme on this computer (I guess it's part of Windows 8.1) doesn't do this. Thanks, Petra

Todas las respuestas (1)

more options

Hi Petra,

the matter is, that in your old settings you had checked the "leave mails on server" setting (or maybe you used IMAP as mail protocol). This means, that all your mail since 2007 is still held on the server and TB consideres them as "new" and starts to download them. So you have to close thunderbird or kill the process via task manager (ctrl Alt Del==>taskmanager). Then you could log on to the webmailer of your provider and delete all mails you don't want to keep any longer. If you're on job, you should ask your admin to help you to configure the mail settings. If this is your private computer and you can't access your mailbox via webmail, then ask again, I'll try to help you further.

regards georg