How can I tell the status of imap downloads for a Gmail account or folder?
How can I tell the status of imap downloads for a Gmail account or folder?
Using Thunderbird Portable 45.1.1. on a Windows 7 Ultimate laptop with a thumb drive for storage. There is no AV program running on the machine.
Since I found out about safe mode (is there a command line setting for this), I'm running it in that mode, even though I only had a single add-on. It still pegs the CPU and pegs memory, so I can't realistically use the machine for anything else while TB is running, unless I switch to off-line mode. I was hoping to use TB as an e-mail client, but right now it's impossible because it consumes all resources available for its downloading and indexing activity,
I want to be able to use and search the accounts off-line on any computer I'm at. Eventually, I planned to move a lot of the mail to local folders and remove it from the Gmail accounts.
Several weeks ago I started adding Gmail accounts. I added accounts over those weeks one at a time or a few at a time if they were really small. Most of them are small with only a few thousand messages. I've not added an account in two weeks. All have multiple folders (labels). All except one or two of these accounts receive more than 100 messages a day, most receive about 10 a week or less. According to the TB article about Gmail, it only downloads one copy of each message, but that statement does not appear to be born out in practice, because it appears to download Inbox, AllMail, and all variety of other folders, small and large.
I leave TB running for hours a day until it crashes, as it just did (twice) while I was writing this on another machine.
Some of the earliest accounts I added still appear to be downloading Inbox, AllMail, and other folders.
Since every account displays that it's up to date in the Activity Manager window, every time I run TB, how can they be still downloading for all these folders all the time? I'm guessing the "up-to-date" message is only for Inbox, but then why does it later show its downloading hundreds or thousands of messages from Inbox?
So my main question is:
Is there a way to determine whether TB is really finished (downloading and indexing) synchronizing a folder or an account?
A secondary question is:
Is there a way to limit the amount of resources TB consumes for its synchronizing activity?
Richard
All Replies (3)
I suggest you start buy right click ing selecting subscribe an unselecting all mail. That will reduce traffic by about 50% probably.
Thank you, Matt.
I could also just turn off "Keep messages for this account on this computer", I suppose.
I know that All Mail contains messages that are not in any other folder because Gmail doesn't provide a way to ensure that all messages are labeled. So, if I want to have the complete account locally, I'll need All Mail.
Your suggestion reinforces my suspicion that TB stores more than one copy of Gmail messages, contrary to the article that describes how it deals with Gmail accounts.
I'm looking for confirmation, one way or another, that, at some point, all this constant downloading and indexing will end. If need be, I'd turn off accounts completely and turn them back on, serially, if I could determine that the initial synchronization of the account is complete. That's the reason for primary question.
I haven't added an account in weeks, and I've tried to keep TB on the laptop running continuously to let it catch up, if that's the source of the issue.
On the other hand, if the constant downloading and indexing won't end, then TB won't be suitable. I'm trying to get an answer to that earlier than later, so I don't spend my time trying to fix something that won't resolve itself.
I have seen the bug report where they say that multiple copies are no longer stored, but I just can not bring myself to believe that the issue is actually fixed. IT has been around for so long
I would suggest that you disable Thunderbird indexing, and disable the option for windows search to index mail as well.
Windows search duplicates each email as a wdseml file so your storage requirement doubles, less attachments. Particularly unhelpful if your USB is getting a hammering with other data files.
Thunderbird search can be turned on again after the dust settles and by stopping is allows for other processes to complete. Before turning it on again it is a good idea to close Thunderbird and delete the file global-messagesdb.sqlite. That way the regenerate index will have everything without any sort of issues which could arise of not indexing the mail that arrived while it was turned off.
Finally, it is often a good idea to disable anti virus scanning of the folder that the mail is stored in. Sometime the anti virus and Thunderbird get into a fight over access rights and nothing useful gets done as neither program really works correctly. So creating an exclusion in the anti virus for the mail and imap mail folders and their children in your profile can have major speed impacts.