Thunder maintains headers on your computer, and full copies of messages you're working with. When you delete a message, it disappears from your PC and also from the Comcast server. If you want to keep copies of what you delete, you need to first COPY the messages to a local storage folder first. Since you run a business, I encourage frequent backups. I would not trust any proprietary backup software unless you do a thorough test to prove that it works. I see many posts here from users where their fee-paid backup did not work. That may be happening because a backup done while thunderbird is running will usually be corrupt. My personal preference is to do these two steps: - exit thunderbird - copy c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to external media Then should you ever need a restore, or to move to a new computer, you just need to '\ - install thunderbird and exit - copy the backed up thunderbird folder to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming to overwrite the initial default.

Well. . .. This might be a tad over my head. So the folder should just be somewhere on my computer, not in Thunderbird? After I copy them there, will they look like they did in Thunderbird? Will the environment be different, in the event I go searching for a particular email? Do I come back into Thunderbird and just delete all my email and rely on what is now in a folder somewhere on my computer? Sorry for sounding so ignorant. I just don't want to move email, and then find myself at a loss for being able to locate something.

Thanks much,

Wayne

To back up. IMAP is not really ever a "local copy" or an archive. It is a local "view" of mail stored on the server for whatever account it is. In this instance you mention a comcast server.

A POP account is a fully local copy of mail downloaded from the mail server and is in no way linked to what is on that server going forward.

Despite any backup of the Thunderbird profile that may be made, if the mail is removed from the IMAP server, or the account is closed say then restoring the backup will see the backup mail simply syncronised to oblivion as the server copy is considered at all time to be canonical.

Perhaps the most obvious reflection on this is the Thunderbird built in export facility does not export IMAP mail data. At all. Nor does the import profile function. Thunderbird relies on this mail being downloaded over again from the server post restore.

So before you can consider you have a"local copy" to backup. You need to break the link to the server. Personally I just use a pop account and download the inbox locally and remove the mail from the server as it is downloaded. But for IMAP it is more difficult. First the mail has to by moved to a non account linked location, like local folders.

There is a profile backup in the import export tools addon. It does, or used to, do a complete backup of your entire profile including IMAP data but it is slow. So really it needs to run overnight. I have if execute when I exit Thunderbird and cancel it most times when if pop up it;s start backup notice. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools-ng/?src=ss

Thank you Matt. That's detailed and makes general sense to me.

I think what I need is to locate a skilled computer guru that understands all the ins and outs and can execute this project for me. Once in place, I'm pretty sure I could adapt.

Is there a good, safe way to locate such a person. I of course would pay their fee. I'm not sure if there is a specific term I should use, other than "tech guy." And should I use avenues like Craigslist to find such a person locally? Or would you recommend some other way?

Well, a simple solution is to change from IMAP to POP. That lets you have 100% of your mail on your PC. That makes you responsible for not losing it, but doing regular backups can easily manage that. If you have a reason for IMAP, you could create a second account in POP. If you do that, you would want to set it to 'leave on server' BEFORE entering password the first time to ensure that no messages were lost. In that way, you would have all the mail physically on your PC, never deleting anything, and still have the IMAP account for your access from possibly multiple devices.