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I installed Thunderbird for the first time ever and unfortunately started downloading e-mails before I noticed that it's set on deleting all e-mails after two weeks. I paused the downloading, unchecked the "no longer than two weeks" part of "keep messages on server", and in fact uninstalled Thunderbird. When I open the mailbox through web, the messages seem to be still there so hopefully no harm done yet. Are my messages safe, or have they been marked to be deleted from the server in two weeks? And if the latter, can I avert it somehow?

2 Answers 2

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Your messages are safe.

It sounds like you are using POP3. This protocol typically downloads messages and deletes them from the server immediately but has an option to defer deletion. If this is the case then the deletion instructions are handled by the client, not the server - so if the client does not connect to the server and give the instruction to delete the messages they won't be deleted.

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  • Thing is, I don't remember which one was selected. If it was the other protocol, how would that work?
    – Laura
    Aug 7, 2020 at 7:47
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    IMAP is the other protocol, which, by default keeps everything on the server. Most email clients do not even allow a delete after x with IMAP anyway.
    – LPChip
    Aug 7, 2020 at 8:00
  • Thank you both a lot.
    – Laura
    Aug 7, 2020 at 11:58
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Posting an answer of my own because I consider the other answer to not be clear on how things work.

When thunderbird (or other email clients for that matter) connect through POP3, it will download all email locally and does not consider the status of the email on the server.

Once the email is downloaded locally, the email is stored in a local database with a timestamp on when the email was downloaded locally. When all emails are downloaded, the client will then see if the setting delete mails from server after x days is set. If so, it will query the local database and get a list of emails that is larger than these x days but still have the flag set located on server. For these emails it will send a command to the server to remove the mails and set a flag locally that the emails have been deleted.

This effectively means the following:

If you set "keep mail on server for 2 weeks", you download all email once which takes... say, an hour, and you then close thunderbird and never open it again, the emails remain on the server, because it actually does need a second synchronisation AFTER that timelimit to start deleting the emails from the server. So for as long as 2 weeks, you can keep send/receive emails without the mails deleting from the server.

This also means that if you download all mails and have the setting keep mail on server for 3 days set during that transfer, then you decide to change it to 2 weeks, the mail you already downloaded will remain on the server for 2 weeks, not 3 days, or if you set it to always keep on the server, the mail is never deleted.

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