Hi,
I am using Gmail as my main mail, and was trying out TB Portable some time ago. The standard setting in TB was to NOT leave messages on server. Maybe my fault for not checking, but the result was that my test run of TB cleaned out my Gmail totally which wasn't my intention at all.
My suggestion would be to change the standard configuration in TB Portable to leave messages on server.
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That's the default setting in Thunderbird itself. We don't touch configuration entries like that, that's Mozilla's prerogative (and the user's).
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
Are you using POP or IMAP? I'm guessing POP, since IMAP, by design, is set up to sync with a server. Anyway, Gmail's POP doesn't work the same as every other POP service, and in my experience it makes no difference whatsoever whether "leave messages on the server" is turned on or off. What does make a difference is what you have Gmail set to do when downloading messages through POP: If you check your Gmail prefs, you should have a setting that specifies whether Gmail should delete downloaded messages, archive them, or leave them alone.
Aha, thanks Bruce! That I didn't know.
And thanks to Chris as well for the answer, but I still don't see why that's the default from Mozilla, but that's another thing...
The default for POP users was to download all messages. And this setting is automatically set per-account as you create each account. So we can't set it to something else ahead of time.
That's one of the many reasons we've always recommended IMAP over POP (besides the fact that POP is outdated and IMAP should have replaced it the world over ages ago).
I think TB3 (which is currently release candidate 2 and should be released soon) may use it differently and set it to keep on server by default. At the very least, most servers support IMAP and TB3 defaults to IMAP over POP in auto setup, as it should.
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...because IMAP is too slow for my tastes. Even when I set TB3 to download all messages for offline use, it still insists on communicating with the server every time I change folders, open a message, etc. Which results in lots of unnecessary delays, especially when Gmail's server is slow (something that happens quite often).
Gmail POP wouldn't be so bad if it behaved like every other POP service out there, but it doesn't. For example, once you download a message from Gmail via POP, you can't download it again (even on a different client) unless you go into the prefs and mark everything for download again. Which then causes Thunderbird to proceed to download duplicates of every message you have.
Have you tried it with a regular IMAP server? Gmail's IMAP isn't the best as it was basically hammered on to the existing Gmail setup (which itself is a non-standard mail server).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Who else has IMAP? I have a Yahoo account, but I'm pretty sure they don't have IMAP, just POP.
I only use paid, supported providers for all my mail. So that gives you a real IMAP-capable email server to connect to with IDLE support and all the other bells and whistles.
I don't do free email.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!