When you send a message in gmail from TB, it is automatically copied to the Sent Mail folder, not Sent or Sent Items. Is that folder subscribed in TB?

thank you for responding.

Yes. I believe it is because 1) when i sent the email, it copied/saved to the folder I call Sent. 2) Gmail on line is also citing that email in the "sent" box and 3) the name of the sent box is the same name as what is at Gmail.

It is boggling as to why I can see the new sent email on tbird and gmail. but all the other emails in that gmail folder are not downloading to the tbird sent box.

i just did a system restore and restored my win10 to april 14th, when everything was perfect. but it didnt help.

the current version of tbird now is: 78.9.1

What I just noticed while trying to reconcile the settings is that on Gmail, the 2 test messages I sent have imap/ in front of them.

but all the rest are not identified as imap.

i found the 2 test messages on Gmail under a folder called imap/sent

but in another folder, i think the parent folder, all sent messages are in it including the 2 imap ones and all the rest from prior to the past sunday.

and on my tbird, i have both folder linked to the gmail folders.

also, i am playing around with pop and created another account with the pop settings. the inbox is currently downloading from Gmail. but i have no confidence that the Sent Box i created will get populated with all the sent emails.

urgh!!

i wonder what the hell happened? I am a creature of habit and 100% did not alter modify or change anything over night! urgh x 100 !

solution: I had to get on Gmail and do a "select all" and then "label" all them with one of the names of the mailboxes provided by a drop down.

Basically, there is the Sent Box, which is the parent.

Underneath it are the child boxes.

In the parent sent box, I tried to do a "select all" then "move" them to one of the sent boxes. But the only option was to "move" them into the "inbox".

The other option on Gmail, which is not evidentally transparent, is to "label" them. And by selecting a mailbox from the drop down, such as "inbox/sent" or "imap/sent", the messages began to relocate out of the parent folder and into a child folder.

The above methodology occurred on Gmail online. Now back to Tbird, a couple of the sent folders began to be syncronized by Gmail.

At this time, its still downloading into the sent folder(s). So after its all done, i will have to see which sent folders are empty and do a delete.

In conclusion, I do not know how the sent messages on Tbird disappeared but were still on Gmail in a default sent folder.

Also, i do not know what happened to my 2 messages i sent on yesterday. They are 100% no where to be found, except maybe on the recipients inbox.

In any case, this case can be closed down now.

Thanks sfhowes for helping out. This issue was 100% unexpected and i had 100% done nothing to have caused it.  :-(

I think all these maneuvers could be avoided by following some simple instructions:

1. Uncheck 'Place a copy in' in the Copies & Folders section of Account Settings, and do not create any folders for sent mail. Gmail automatically copies sent messages to Sent Mail.

2. Allow the Sent Mail to be visible in IMAP through gmail settings on the gmail website.

3. Subscribe to the Sent Mail folder in TB.

I'll see what is happening with these folders. The sent folder is still downloading from Gmail.

But rest assured that when i used TB's automated system to set up the "existing accounts", it did all the work.

Afterwards, all i had to do was/is to enjoy reading and sending emails.

hello sfhowes,

looks like everything with the messages are back in order.

what i conclude is that the error occurred on the Gmail side

what seemed to happened is that somehow someway all my sent messages were re-tagged by Gmail. There are also a bunch of email boxes which i think are imaps, pops and perhaps local too. Its a messy situation.

So tagging and categorizing emails on Gmail online is something i had not done before. It was never needed before. Tbird and Google were always in sync.

But if Tbird was going to provide some basic functionality again, i had to go thru all the child boxes on Gmail that had the word "sent" in them and re-tag all the emails so they all would go to/be stored in the parent "sent" box.

Once this was done, Tbird's sent box began to repopulate again. But those emails of 5/2/2021 are 100% gone. So i think Gmail may have been attacked on that day or Google did some reorganization. Whatever happened, it was not my fault nor Tbirds.

Now however, i got to go into Tbird and figure out how to get rid of the extra boxes that i probably created inadverdentaly. They have an envelope with a pad lock and are colored blue.