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Technical Help / Re: Thunderbird email
« on: Wednesday 16 April 25 10:45 BST (UK) »
Webmail – using a browser (such as IE, Chrome, Edge, Opera, Firefox) to logon to your email providers’ website to access emails. Emails are not stored on the device you are using to access the email server. Storage space may be limited and retention policies (how long emails will stay on the server before being deleted) may be in place.
Email Client – using dedicated software (such as Outlook, Thunderbird) to access the email provider server. Emails are downloaded and stored locally on the device you are using to access the email server.
Email clients are usually configured in one of two ways:
POP – once an email has been downloaded to a device during the "Check for new emails" process, the email is deleted from the email server. Useful for situations where there is only one device accessing the email account.
IMAP – synchronises one email account over multiple devices. For example, a user could ask Thunderbird to check for new emails on their PC before heading out. Seeing an email of interest, they could then access the emails again on their phone on the train. Because Thunderbird was configured for IMAP access, when the phone connects to the email server, it will see a difference in the messages that have already been downloaded and sync them so that the phone and Thunderbird remain consistent. If the user then decides the email wasn’t that important after all and deletes it on the phone, the next time Thunderbird is asked to connect to the email server, it will also delete that same message from the Thunderbird inbox.
Using an email client, the retention polices can be tailored to your own needs as the messages are stored locally – just make sure you remember to configure that correctly.
Thunderbird has a built-in backup process. Select Tools option from the menu and then Export. Thunderbird will offer to backup accounts, messages and the address book to a single ZIP file by clicking on the Export button. This ZIP file should be backed up but can also be copied to a new device and by using the Import function, the accounts and messages can be restored. Note the warning message displayed during the export phase – if you have emails going back to 1998 with loads of attachments, you may go exceed the 2GB limit in which case you may need to do things using a more manual process or as suggested in #4 using third party backup software.
Email Client – using dedicated software (such as Outlook, Thunderbird) to access the email provider server. Emails are downloaded and stored locally on the device you are using to access the email server.
Email clients are usually configured in one of two ways:
POP – once an email has been downloaded to a device during the "Check for new emails" process, the email is deleted from the email server. Useful for situations where there is only one device accessing the email account.
IMAP – synchronises one email account over multiple devices. For example, a user could ask Thunderbird to check for new emails on their PC before heading out. Seeing an email of interest, they could then access the emails again on their phone on the train. Because Thunderbird was configured for IMAP access, when the phone connects to the email server, it will see a difference in the messages that have already been downloaded and sync them so that the phone and Thunderbird remain consistent. If the user then decides the email wasn’t that important after all and deletes it on the phone, the next time Thunderbird is asked to connect to the email server, it will also delete that same message from the Thunderbird inbox.
Using an email client, the retention polices can be tailored to your own needs as the messages are stored locally – just make sure you remember to configure that correctly.
Thunderbird has a built-in backup process. Select Tools option from the menu and then Export. Thunderbird will offer to backup accounts, messages and the address book to a single ZIP file by clicking on the Export button. This ZIP file should be backed up but can also be copied to a new device and by using the Import function, the accounts and messages can be restored. Note the warning message displayed during the export phase – if you have emails going back to 1998 with loads of attachments, you may go exceed the 2GB limit in which case you may need to do things using a more manual process or as suggested in #4 using third party backup software.