We'd like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum. This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are - or become - political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.

help pls - gmail / thunderbird probs

hi -i would be really grateful for help, my pc is driving me nuts, i've looked on various website / tried alsorts to no avail- i'm a non technical person so might not understand really whats happening (pls reply in simplistic pc terms! - thx )
>new pc April, Set up mozilla thunderird (as have on other pc with no problems), set up to recieve 2 ntlworld email - i didnt ask for gmail, it just appeared-
>the email directory has combined "unified" folder at the top of the directories - Which is what i want, with in, drafts , sent, junk, deleted-
these directories all work fine / delete & move as i want them to
> the problem, below the unified directory are the 2 individual accounts, then it says "gmail", below which says "all mail", then a few more folders then "imap", then more folders-
the problem is nomatter what i set the account options to, or try deleting, including keep only 200 messages, the "all mail" on one account is retaining every message, in, sent, junk - the lot- 12,500 currently!!!
pc is grinding to a halt, the other email account is similar & holding 5000, how do i stop this and only keep the unified folders, which move & delete when i tell them to- please help (in simple terms)
thx j.

Comments

  • 23n1th
    23n1th Posts: 1,523 Forumite
    Its a guess since I dont use thunderbird not having an email account other than online. I would guess that you've not set thunderbird to delete emails on the server of either ntl or gmail. It might be downloading them every time you start thunderbird which is slowing up your system.

    Just a guess mind.
  • jayme1
    jayme1 Posts: 2,154 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    is ther not a way to prevent sync of certain folders? even live mail has that function.

    a (semi) quick fix would be to log on to gmail webmail and empty the junk folder, or you could use something like windows live mail from live essentials.
    you can also set gmail to automatically collect email from your other accounts and you can also send mail from the ntl accounds from inside gmail, might be easier for you.
  • coxy17
    coxy17 Posts: 68 Forumite
    That's the way GMail works. They store every e-mail you send and receive, even if you delete it from your inbox it will still appear in 'All Mail'. Because you get so much storage with GMail (over 7GB) they simply archive all of your e-mail. People think it's not necessary but I have found it useful on more than one occasion.

    In answer to your question; Thunderbird is probably configured to download complete e-mails. You can change the setting so that it only downloads the headers (minimal data). It will only download the full e-mail if/when you open it. I don't use Thunderbird but looking at a guide I found, if you go into your 'Account Settings' and then 'Sever Settings' for the GMail account, there is a tick box for 'Fetch headers only'. Tick that and then apply the settings. Hopefully that will solve your problem.
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 348.2K Banking & Borrowing
  • 252.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 452.3K Spending & Discounts
  • 240.8K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 617K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 175.6K Life & Family
  • 254K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16K Discuss & Feedback
  • 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.