Can I switch an existing Thunderbird account from POP to IMAP?

pnellesen · 08-22-2005, 09:56 PM

Currently, I have a POP account with my ISP (no IMAP). I have a Thunderbird account set up to download all messages from this account to my local machine. What I want to do is setup an IMAP server on my machine and have my ISP auto-forward all mail to an address on this machine. This part is pretty straightforward. However, what I would then like to do is change my EXISTING Thunderbird account from a POP incoming server to my new IMAP server, point being that I would now be able to access all my old, saved email from another machine. Is this possible, or will I have to create a new Thunderbird account for the IMAP server? And if the latter, would I then be able to simply copy all the old mails from the "Local Folders" for the POP account over to the IMAP account?

If this isn't making much sense (or if there's a better/easier way to do what I'm talking about), please let me know.

Thanks in advance,

friend3141 · 08-22-2005, 10:12 PM

I have not used thunderbird in linux,
But in my win thunderbird, there is an option called as "global inbox"
If you select this for your new IMAP account, all the mails would be stored in a single inbox.
I guess thats what you want...

aysiu · 08-22-2005, 10:27 PM

In my experience, you can't make use the "global inbox" for IMAP--only POP.
But if I understand what you're asking, yes, you can do that. In fact, that's why I did. If you have POP for address@mail.com, you can create a "new" account that's IMAP for address@mail.com (same actual email account, "different" account as far as Thunderbird's concerned), then drag your messages from the POP account to the IMAP account, provided there's enough space.

pnellesen · 08-22-2005, 10:51 PM

Sounds good

Thanks for the info.

pnellesen · 08-24-2005, 11:15 AM

Ok, I have a dumb question: Which imapd comes with Slackware 10.1? I'm assuming it's the "Cyrus" imap server, and if I want to install/configure it I would follow the "Cyrus-IMAP HOW-TO"? Acutally, I went ahead and setup "imapd" in my inetd.conf file, and I could telnet to port 143 on my machine, but that's as far as I was able to get - I need to know how to add users, and how to get sendmail to work with it.

Thanks