Thunderbird email

[wilcoxon]

Does Thunderbird delete emails after a certain time or is there a limit of how many you can store.
Yesterday for some reason I lost a lot, and I mean a lot of emails from My BT account.
At that time they were not on Thunderbird either.
Today they are back on TB, but not on BT. I have lost a lot of important information as well as insurance and other things .
 I really don`t understand as I didn`t delete them   permanently.
Has anyone got any ideas of what`s gone on .
Thanks.

[LizzieW]

i've used Thunderbird for years.  I know after you delete emails they are deleted after some time.  I think you can set the time yourself, can't remember how to do it now, but suggest you go to Help at the top of an email.

In the case of Insurances, etc.  I have files under My Documents and I just save the emails to those files.  I then delete them from Thunderbird but they stay in the files.

[AngusMcCoatup]

It will depend on how you have set up Thunderbird to access your BT email account.

Using a POP3 account means Thunderbird will download from the BT email server and delete it from there once confirmed the download is successful.

An IMAP set up allows a number of devices to access the same email account and view all emails, sent and received.

If things are going missing and then coming back again, it looks like a synchronisation issue with Thunderbird and the BT email server.

Also check the account settings in Thunderbird - make sure "Don't delete any messages" is checked in the Disk Space section for the BT email account.

[wilcoxon]

It will depend on how you have set up Thunderbird to access your BT email account.

Using a POP3 account means Thunderbird will download from the BT email server and delete it from there once confirmed the download is successful.

An IMAP set up allows a number of devices to access the same email account and view all emails, sent and received.

If things are going missing and then coming back again, it looks like a synchronisation issue with Thunderbird and the BT email server.

Also check the account settings in Thunderbird - make sure "Don't delete any messages" is checked in the Disk Space section for the BT email account.

Oh my goodness I wish I knew all that before. So my emails have gone from BT because I downloaded TB. 
It was POP 3. That`s no good. It seems I am stuck with TB now unless there is an alternative but I can`t see how I can use another programme if the Emails have gone. Oh Dear,

I have set .Leave messages on server for 750 days, it was  on 14.
Unchecked Delete messages . Not too sure about Clear Cache, what is that ?
Also I can`t see anything about attaching JPG , only word docs and PDF.
Is that right.

I only have TB  and BT on my laptop for now and BT only has 11 emails,
what will happen to the BT email on my laptop, desktop and tablet, will it continue as before. 

I have Windows Live Mail 2012  on my desktop, which hasn`t lost all of the emails, I know where I am with that, but I suppose it is a bit outdated now.
Would you suggest an alternative for that in the future .

I don`t really like the  BT set up on the tablet.
 Is there any way of retrieving the deleted emails ?

So many questions. Some times I feel as if it is all beyond me and at my age it`s just to much 
At the moment I am feeling a bit sick.  Thanks anyway.

[Zaphod99]

I use Mozbackup to regularly and often backup all my mail, going back over 15 years.

Zaph.

[oldohiohome]

edited: I just re-read your post and most of this below the line might not apply. You say the messages are back on Thunderbird but not on BT, since you are using POP3.
You could always email them to yourself if you want them back on BT. But as LizzieW says, you should also download them to your device into a folder like Documents. Or print them out if they are important.

-----
Did you look in the Trash folder in Thunderbird?

I don't live in the UK, so I know nothing about BT email, so the next few questions may not be helpful.
Did you look in the trash folder for BT on the tablet?
Can you, or someone you trust, access BT email through a web browser, like you can with gmail.com? It looks like it might be at email.bt.com - I don't know, I only just Googled it now.
If so, look in the trash folder there.

In all of those cases, if you find what you are looking for, there should be an option to move the messages back to the Inbox or whatever other folder you had them in. In Thunderbird you just drag the message from Trash to Inbox.

gmail doesn't delete trash until 30 days are passed. I don't know what BT does.

-----
after re-reading - I still suggest looking at the trash files on BT, either by using the tablet or by going directly to their email site in a browser.

[GrahamH]

The main point about this discussion is to understand that webmail (e.g. BT) and email clients (whether Thunderbird, gmail or whatever) are only for accessing and sending emails.
They have in and out/sent boxes which will store messages for a while but that's no different, logically, from the mat or cage behind the door with a letter box in it. They are not designed for long term storage.

Any messages which one wishes to keep for future reference should be stored in a structured system like any other files.

[wilcoxon]

Thank you.
It seems all is not lost.
I have had Windows Live mail on my desktop since the days of XP.  I really like it.
When I got the laptop (second hand) a couple of months ago it was never intended to be for my  main use, just something to take away with me to keep up with things.
Windows didn`t seem to have an email programme I could find for the laptop so that`s why I downloaded Thunderbird.
It has totally emptied my BT mailbox and downloaded everything that was there. Inbox and deleted messages - the lot. 
I ended up with hundreds of deleted emails which had  stayed on BT.
I have spent quite a few hours on Thunderbird going through them all manually and deleting those I really don`t want.
Many were multiple notifications of replies from Rootchat  and   emails from Ebay etc.

 Then I started on Outlook on the desktop. Thankfully everything there was unaffected, I had folders for various people / subjects and they were still there. Some I had forgotten about. There are some from 2012 when I first started an interest in History.

 I have been playing with both Thunderbird and Outlook and it seems that when an email comes to me through from BT it  goes to both of them.
I deleted the unwanted ones  permanently  and they were removed from BT as well.
I think I need to keep a weekly check on them all. 
I also found  all previous emails   from  quite a while ago that had been saved to a folder when I had my desktop updated to 10. The shop I took it to did that for me. I never was about to find them till recently. 

I now want to know  how do I save emails to a folder myself on my hard drive or even a memory stick.
Thank again.

[Zaphod99]

There is a very active TB support forum, that has lots of people with good technical experience.

Zaph