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Moving Archived Mail to Sub-Folder Results in Duplicate Mail

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  • Last reply by fusionex

fusionex
fusionex
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I have about 200,000 archived messages in one of my gmail accounts. In hopes of making it more manageable, I moved mail into new sub-folders in the archive folder by year. At first, this seemed to do what was intended: removed the mail from the archived folder and copied the mail into the appropriate sub-folder.

However, Thunderbird began re-downloading all of my archived messages again. All mail in my top-level archived folder began re-downloading, resulting in 200,000 emails again, and all the sub-folders also had their corresponding email. I suspect this happened because at gmail's servers, the sub-folders are tags of the All Mail folder, rather than actual sub-folders.

Thus, I'm not sure what's the right way to make the archived folder work faster in Thunderbird, short of deleting messages in the archive. Could someone please advise me on this issue?

Thanks, Josh

I have about 200,000 archived messages in one of my gmail accounts. In hopes of making it more manageable, I moved mail into new sub-folders in the archive folder by year. At first, this seemed to do what was intended: removed the mail from the archived folder and copied the mail into the appropriate sub-folder. However, Thunderbird began re-downloading all of my archived messages again. All mail in my top-level archived folder began re-downloading, resulting in 200,000 emails again, and all the sub-folders also had their corresponding email. I suspect this happened because at gmail's servers, the sub-folders are tags of the All Mail folder, rather than actual sub-folders. Thus, I'm not sure what's the right way to make the archived folder work faster in Thunderbird, short of deleting messages in the archive. Could someone please advise me on this issue? Thanks, Josh

All Replies (2)

Matt
Matt
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As far a gmail is concerned there will be a copy of any mail you have in the all mail folder. End of story. Any other folder is a tag on mail in your all mail folder.

Most people simply unsubscribe from the all mail folder. Do not see it and do not download the mails in it. SO when they do something like you have done, they see what they find manageable instead of a listing of 200,000 items.

fusionex
fusionex Question owner
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Thanks for the suggestion, Matt. I tried unsubscribing the folder. However, I notice that this removes the folder locally from Thunderbird, which is not exactly what I want. I still like accessing old messages from Thunderbird.

After some investigation and Google searching, it looks like choosing the "Synchronize the most recent 1 year" option, unsubscribing the All Mail folder, and re-subscribing will result in downloading all message headers but only the contents of messages for the most recent year. Is my understanding correct?

Thanks, Josh