What exactly are you doing when you get the error? What is the full error message?

Hi, I am trying to download messages from yahoo mail (sbcglobal) and get the message:

"The folder Inbox is full, and can't hold any more messages. To make room for more messages, delete any old or unwanted mail and compact the folder."

We are trying to download over 14,000 messages. They have to be saved on the desktop for documentation purposes. We can create archive folders once we are able to download all of the messages.

Well as you have now learned the inbox is a bad place to store 14,000 mails. perhaps if you had used a folder of two you would not be seeking unlimited inbox size.

You can delete your yahoo account. Go to the Tools menu (alt+T) > options > advanced > general and tell Thunderbird to use one file per email on new account This will give almost unlimited storage, but it is still something that is in development. So is not really recommended for production use, however it will give you what you want.

Hi, I have been trying for years to convince them to download as they go but was not able to do so. I agree with you. I will try that and see if that fixes our issue as well as another one I ran into. I will leave that for now until I get to work on the first one. Thank you recommending to use the new parameter that was just introduced recently. We will try that and see what happens. Again, thanks.

HI, That solved some of the problem but now we get the message that the server times out due to inactivity( my interpretation):

"The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail 
     server  inbound.att.net responded: inactivity timeout."

We also get 'no new messages to download' yet we cannot see current or messages beyond a year. We are going to have to try another client even though I really don't want to. If you have any ideas, let me know.