How do I configure ThunderBird to get all my GMail email and not just new messages?

[Bill Thompson]

How do I configure ThunderBird to get all my GMail emsil and not just the new messages on the server?

Yes, I have asked the mozilla forum this question too. But I wonder if some people here are savy about this as well?

[Denial]

I don't use Thunderbird, but I had an idea for a workaround. If you mark all your gmail emails as unread and download all "new" mails with Thunderbird, will that take care of your problem? You're just trying to get a complete backlog of emails downloaded to your local machine, right?

Edit: nvm that, this is how to do it.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34030&topic=1556



Sign in to Gmail.
Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
Select Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded).
Click Save Changes.
Open the mail client you've configured for Gmail, and check for new messages.

[grmcdorman]

GMail supports IMAP access now; that's a better alternative than POP. In IMAP, the mail client - such as Thunderbird - is directly accessing the mails stored on the server; in POP the mails are downloaded. In addition, GMail shows your tags as folders when accessed this way.

Learn more (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=75725) on GMail IMAP

Configuration instructions (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=75726) for IMAP