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thunderbird new install to back up gmail - not marking downloaded (POP3) already read emails as read

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thunderbirdforums
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Fresh installation of Thunderbird.

Connected to my gmail account just fine. I'm using POP3 as I do NOT want emails deleted in gmail/web interface to be deleted in Thunderbird so all emails, even if deleted, intentionally or by mistake, will be saved locally.

All working fine but ALL the incoming emails are marked as unread!

Did I miss a setting? I know about the setting to mark emails as read once viewed but I'm not viewing the emails in Thunderbird, I'm just getting them from google/gmail. I thought that if they were marked as read in gmail, they'd come through marked as read in Thunderbird.

Thanks

Fresh installation of Thunderbird. Connected to my gmail account just fine. I'm using POP3 as I do NOT want emails deleted in gmail/web interface to be deleted in Thunderbird so all emails, even if deleted, intentionally or by mistake, will be saved locally. All working fine but ALL the incoming emails are marked as unread! Did I miss a setting? I know about the setting to mark emails as read once viewed but I'm not viewing the emails in Thunderbird, I'm just getting them from google/gmail. I thought that if they were marked as read in gmail, they'd come through marked as read in Thunderbird. Thanks

All Replies (1)

Matt
Matt
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The choice of protocol contains trade offs and with POP you get immutable local copies and not much else.. IMAP synchronizes things like message status.

POP (Post Office Protocol) only contains the concept of a letter drop from which mail is retrieved. Things like read status are not even dreamed of, even the retention of messages on the server, "until I delete them" is a rather complex implementation because the authors of the protocol (RFC 918) back in 1984 were working with a mail drop you connected to and cleared. Have a look at just how simple the original POP document is. Even the current V3 implementation was largely composed before 1990 despite being adopted around the same time as the newer IMAP protocol which addressed the so called deficiencies of POP