Several suggestions.

1. Disable email scanning in your anti virus product. 2. Create an exception in your anti virus for Thunderbird profile folder. These both just free up the process and remove impediments to the process. 3. Check how much data you have used for the 24 hours. Google do have a limit. about 200Mb I think. But I really don't recall.

Thanks for your help. I implemented the exception in my antivirus (Microsoft Endpoint Protection), and it seems to have fixed the problem, as I have uploaded around 500 messages without seeing the problem recur.

I do not believe that the data limit is the problem, because immediately after getting the error I can usually upload more files. But that is very good to watch out for. Google has now raised the IMAP limit to 500Mb for Google Apps accounts, and it would not be hard to hit that when migrating years of emails.

I appreciate your help.

Well, I spoke too soon. After moving a few hundred messages, the error returned.

I waited 36 hours to be sure that the problem was not the Google daily IMAP bandwidth limit, but the problem remains. Twenty consecutive attempts at moving messages from a local folder to an IMAP folder failed with the "Could not parse command" error.

Interestingly, the problem I am seeing at the moment depends on the local folder I am moving from. The folder that I was trying to move from when I first encountered the problem now gives me the problem every time I try. Another folder that was giving the error two days ago is also is giving the problem every time. In contrast, moving messages from a folder I had not touched seems to work, at least for the half dozen messages I have tried so far.

Looking back, I have always been able to move a few messages from a folder without the error, but then the error occurs.

So a possible pattern is that the process of moving messages out of a local folder to an IMAP folder somehow alters the folder in such a way that moving more files is not possible. I have tried compacting the local folders with the problem, but that seems to make no difference.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

P.S. I cannot disable all antivirus scanning due to university enforced policy, but I have disabled virus checking on the profile folder.

try copy.... move includes a delete. I wonder if that might be an issue. With Google one never knows. Their so called IMAP is not really IMAP and Thunderbird has so many Gmail only patches to paper over Gmail idiosyncrasies it is not funny.

Finally I do have another sort of solution.

Export the mail from the gmail folder to an operating system file in MBOX format

Install the import export tools add-on. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

Now select the folder you want to import to in the folder tree and from the import export tools entry in the tools menu. Import the MBOX file.

This "might" work better as there is no move. only an add when the mail is imported.

I tried copying and got the same error.

Matt, thanks for all the time you are taking with this. I will give the export/import approach a try. I will report back.

Thanks again. I gave the import and export a try, but without success.

I downloaded the import/export app, but it does not allow importing into an IMAP account, as confirmed here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders.

Next I tried importing it back into my local folders, in hopes that this would somehow clean up whatever is preventing some files from being moved. Once again, dragging the files (or using Move) generates the "Could not parse command" error.

Here is an update on my problem. One new observation: sometimes when the attempt to move a message fails with the error, I can then not move any other messages in the folder, nor can I delete them, until I close Thunderbird and start it again:

I have tried the following without success:

• Disabled security scans of my profile folder
• Turned off checking for messages
• Turned off "Keep messages on this computer"

None of this fixed my problem.

However, something that I just tried that seems to be working (with an unfortunate side effect) is:

• Go into offline mode.
• Move the messages from the local folder to a folder under the IMAP account.
• Go back online.

This will transfer the messages to my Google Mail account after I go online. The unfortunate side effect is that the date and time shown in a GMail search is the time I went online, not the original date and time of the message. Within each message, the date and time are shown correctly, but not in the search listing.

I welcome any advice.

I seem to have found a cumbersome but functioning work around:

1. In Thunderbird, go offline. 2. In Thunderbird, move messages from the local folder to a folder under the IMAP account. 3. In Thunderbird, go online. The messages will sync with Google, but in GMail the folder list or search list will show the wrong date for each conversation. 4. In Thunderbird, move the messages back to a local folder. 5. In GMail web interface, make sure to delete any instance of the messages in GMail folders/labels. 6. In GMail web interface, search for the messages in Gmail/Trash (in:Trash). Do this right away so that the relevant messages will be shown as the newest, otherwise you will have trouble finding them. 7. In GMail web interface, delete the messages permanently from GMail/Trash. 8. In Thunderbird, move the messages back to the Google IMAP folder.

Your messages will not show up in GMail in the proper folder/label with the proper date and time.

One more update: the above procedure is not 100% reliable, but it usually works. A few messages will not copy by the above approach.