A quick about how POP mail works
Post Office Protocol mail works in such a way where in the inbox and only the inbox is downloaded by a mail client such as Thunderbird. In other words, anything not in the inbox is not downloaded.
Move everything in webmail from “Incoming OLD” to the main inbox
Yes, I know, this may take a while. And depending on how much mail there is to move, your webmail may screw up where you have to logout/login a few times just to get all the mail moved.
Once all mail is moved, launch Thunderbird
Thunderbird once launched should immediately start downloading everything in the inbox. Again, depending on how much mail you have, this may take a while.
Important note: If Thunderbird encounters a server timeout (which may very well happen when downloading a ton of emali), just close Thunderbird, relaunch, and it will pick up where it left off.
When the mail download is complete, check your webmail inbox for any new mail
You may have received some new emails while Thunderbird was downloading the old mail. If you see any in webmail, simply move those messages to the “Incoming CURRENT” folder you created on the webmail side earlier.
Delete all the old mail out of your webmali’s main inbox
Since you now have a local copy of all your old mail, it’s safe to delete it out of the webmail inbox; the Thunderbird copies will remain.
Archive your mail in Thunderbird
In Thunderbird, Click on the Inbox folder.
Click (at top of the Thunderbird window) Message > Archive.
A new expadable folder (you’ll see a little plus next to it) will be created in the folder list called Archives, and you will notice that Thunderbird will neatly organize the mail by year.
It may take a moment for the archiving process to complete depending on how much mail you downloaded originally. You’ll know it’s done when the Inbox folder in Thunderbird is cleared and all the mail has been moved to its appropriate Archives folder.
Close Thunderbird
Now we have to move on to getting all your sent mail in Thunderbird. Close the mail client for now.
In webmail, check your inbox for any new mail
Some new mail may have arrived during the time you were archiving things in Thunderbird. If so, move them to the “Incoming CURRENT” folder you created before.
When your inbox is empty, move on to the next step.
Move all mail from the “Outgoing OLD” folder to the main inbox
You’re doing the same as you did before, except this time we’re setting up to download all your sent mail.
Check your webmail inbox for new messages before continuing
Again we have to check the webmail inbox to see if anything arrived during the time you moved the old outgoing mail to your inbox. If anything showed up, move those new messages to the “Incoming CURRENT” folder.
Once your inbox has nothing but old sent mail in it that you moved there a moment ago, proceed to the next step.
Launch Thunderbird again
Thunderbird will launch and start downloading all your sent mail out of the webmail inbox. Again, you may experience some server timeouts during this process. Like before, if timeouts happen, just close and relaunch Thunderbird so it can pick up where it left off.
When the download is done, move on to the next step.
Check your webmail inbox for new messages before continuing
Yes, we have to do this again just to make sure there’s no new mail that you miss. If any new mail is in the inbox, move it to the “Incoming CURRENT” folder.
Delete all old sent mail out of the webmail inbox
Thunderbird has a local copy of the messages so you can safely delete the old messages out of the webmail inbox.
In Thunderbird, move all mail in the inbox to the Sent folder
Click the Inbox folder to highlight it.
At the top of the Thunderbird window, click Edit > Select > All to highlight all the messages in the folder list.
At the top of the Thunderbird window, click Message > Move To > [your email address] > Sent. All mail will be moved out of the Inbox to the Sent folder.
Close Thunderbird
If you leave Thunderbird open, it will continue to download any new mail that arrives in your email account.
From here, if you want to backup the entire Thunderbird profile (which includes all messages) and burn to DVD or write to external media (hard drive, USB pendrive, etc.), use the utility MozBackup.
REMEMBER: Thunderbird must not be running when you use MozBackup, else there will be file locking errors.
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