ok I did some reading and i think i understand but i really want to make sure I have a webmail account that i want all my emails to have a local backup on my computer i believe i need to do pop3 with the option selected to leave emails on server that reasoning is because i just want to backup emails on my computer with thunderbird not at this time use thunderbird full on instead of webmail/browser email. possibly in the future it appears that i should not use imap because imap acts like a mirror? i dont want to mirror my emails i want to make a copy somewhere else that i can always have so pop3 with that option to leave mail on the server is what i should do? i think so.... ....right? ^_^*