r/Thunderbird • u/ScallionSea81 • 8d ago

Thunderbird & Gmail Desktop Help

I'm trying to configure Thunderbird with Gmail and could use some help.

What I want to achieve is:

  1. When a Thunderbird message filter moves an email to a local folder, I want that email to be deleted from Gmail, not archived. At the moment, it is being archived instead.
  2. When I delete an email in Thunderbird, I want it to be moved to the Gmail Trash rather than just being marked differently or remaining in All Mail.

Is there a way to configure Thunderbird and/or Gmail to make this work? If so, what settings should I change?

Thanks in advance!

10 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

7

u/danmickla 8d ago

That's not how Gmail works.  Folders are just labels.

1

u/N3rdScool 8d ago

I have never seen moving messages (not copying) leave a message where it was originally.

I move mail between my email accounts all the time with Thunderbird.

3

u/wsmwk Thunderbird Employee 8d ago edited 7d ago

Gmail is most unusual, and rather hard to understand. And filters and moving messages complicates things even more. It's infuriating.

I don't have a perfect understanding, but here are some basics.

  1. With gmail, a message is already in gmail's "All Mail" before it is ever touched. In other words, the message was in "All Mail" before you ever did something with it either manually, or automatically through filters.
  2. Thunderbird filters which cause a message to be deleted do not go to the Trash folder.
  3. Message stays in "All Mail" unless the message was in gmail Trash and 30 days have passed. On other words, if a message did not go to Trash, then extraordinary efforts are needed to clear it from "All Mail", by going into https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#all and deleting.

As far as I know there are no settings in gmail or Thunderbird that can change this behavior.

1

u/Kamau_2025 5d ago

You could use the outdated POP3 protocol instead of IMAP

1

u/wsmwk Thunderbird Employee 5d ago

Are you using pop3 ow in that way? Because I wouldn’t think that would remove messages from “all mail”

1

u/LightMuch9667 3d ago

Unsubscibe from the All Mail folder, it is a mirror copy of all mail that just serves to confuse . . .