long time lurker, very rarely a poster. please don't hold that against me. I am adding an address that is only used for 1 other person, so if I get spammed I will know where it came from iamprecious2000@yahoo.com I will miss you. I understand poor Spike's predicament and if I can come up with $15, will join. Money is extremely tight now, though, so it may not happen. I feel like I know you all personally and, in case I don't hear from you again, may you be blessed. Bye to all. Julie

Thanks, unless I'm missing something important (I do from time -to-time), the "import" function for "Mail" is limited to "Communicator x, Outlook, and a few others, a method to import from Thunderbird (itself so to speak) isn't there. Now this hasn't been a problem in the past, as recent as December I put a new Dell PC into service for my wife, and copied her Thunderbird mail files (just a copy) into the Mail folder on the new PC, worked fine. Has worked for me in the past too, but not this time. I've put some considerable effort since posting this thread, and still haven't figured it out (there should not be a need to "import" or otherwise "map" protocols, the protocol/coding is the same one copy of Thunderbird to the next). This time I am working form a backup file, not he old application of TB, I may have done something wrong in the backup step. I also find it strange that the subject isn't addressed on the Mozilla/TB help forum. The subject is addressed, my difficulty isn't.

bugsybanks : Finally get back to this . . . . re : "Regarding the change to IMAP, I have 3 e-mail addresses set up through my server on the desktop and all 3 are now POP3 on that computer. Do I delete each account and then recreate it as IMAP? Will I lose the e-mails that have been saved under Local Folders? " One thing . . . my "Local folders" only contain Trash & Outbox. All my other Inboxes, etc. are within separate acct folders. I.E., each other acct. contains an Inbox, Drafts, Sent, etc. - outside of "Local Folders." Anyway, there's a good chance that after you create an IMAP acct., the email that you have already downloaded using POP mail, and deleted from the server - won't show up in the IMAP Inbox. You'd have to import them back in. Just to be safe, I would export all your email first so that you have it as backup. Then make new accts as IMAP. See if everything looks correct, or if you need to import anything from the backup you just made. Finally, delete the POP accts. There is a really handy addon tool for TB : ImportExportTools https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/?src=search (That page looks complicated, but the use of the tool is not) The two different ways to export using that tool are - (and you get to the choices by right clicking on "Inbox" or any other folder) : 1) "Export folder" (w/ or w/o structure) This makes an Mbox file of everything that you export. It makes for just a few simple files that aggregate everything within the respective folders. So you will end up w/ one Inbox file, one Drafts file, etc. "Structure" just means you will keep the nested structure of the folders. The disadvantage is that you can't read them later w/o importing them back first (using ImportExportTools). 2) "Export all Messages" (and choose "eml" format here) This exports each email as a .eml file - and you can identify and read each one separately later after exporting. So if you export 500 emails, you'll get 500 .eml files. You can batch import them though using ImportExportTools. And you can read them just by clicking on them individually. There's no harm in exporting both ways if you like. Just create separate folders so you can keep it all straight. Play around with it a bit until you get the hang of it. For all the people recommending this way to do email or that - this debate has been going on for years. There are advantages and disadvantages to each - it really depends on your needs. I wouldn't say that any one of them is "unusual" as someone commented - what's unusual to one is likely normal to someone else. Personally I use them all, and all for different purposes - no one method seems to work for every purpose. I do use web based email for the most part though. Hope that helped. -Kent This post was edited by kbarb on Mon, Oct 20, 14 at 0:42

It IS a very strange situation, indeed. And here's some more weirdness. None of the e-mails stay on the server...I double checked and everything was downloaded, per the settings. When I first started looking for a prog to replace WLM, I started using Outlook....but the e-mails were disappearing from the Inbox. I thought it was a problem with Outlook and even posted a query here on the forum. Never solved that issue, but disliking WLM more as time went on, I gave up on Outlook and thought I'd try Thunderbird. Then the same thing started happening! I had made TB the default and set WLM to NOT check automatically for mail....BUT...when I would open WLM to look at something in a folder there, it would check for mail on Startup and all my e-mails would show up. That's when all the messages in TB would disappear. When I realized this was happening, I opened Outlook, sent some test messages there and watched as they disappeared before my eyes when I opened WLM. Do you think maybe I'm incorrect about the mail staying on the server? Wouldn't I see it there when I go online to check?