G-mail issue

[hewebb]

This is not RV related, however I need some help.
Most of my G-mail messages that I had moved to store under specific labels is missing. Including lots of travel and family photos. I have never been comfortable with G-mail because I never found a way to save some to my computer. I had Earthlink for years until they would not let you have an account unless you did a monthly CC billing. Normally I paid for a year at a time. They stopped that.

Is there any e-mail system available that resides on my computer? Or, one that I can use on-line and save messages to my computer without compromising security.
There are lots of tech smart folks on this site and I will appreciate any help.

[Kjon]

I use an e-mail product called Thunderbird. It's a "open office" (free) product from Mozilla who also provides the Firefox web browser. Thunderbird allows you to store what you want on your computer in folders. I have been using it since I retired many years ago and have never has a problem.

[richard5933]

Try looking in the folder marked "all mail" when you are in the Google G-Mail page online on a computer.

If you are using a computer for email, you can use many email clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook to pull your emails locally. However, the email systems most of us use nowadays are based on a system called IMAP. This type of system allows you to tap into the emails stored in the cloud from any device, and since the email is stored on the cloud all your devices are always in sync.

In the earlier days of email use, most of us used a mail system based on POP systems. These systems had the mail being pulled down to the local email client software and stored on your own computer. It was a great system when you just had the one computer, but if you needed to be able to see your mail from various devices such as a smartphone or second laptop it became unmanageable.

If you only get your email from one point, such as your laptop, you can switch back to using POP mail and keeping all your email locally. I'd advise against this though, since the likelihood of your laptop crashing and taking your email with it is much higher than of G-Mail suddenly losing all your email.

[rk911]

Originally Posted by hewebb

..Is there any e-mail system available that resides on my computer? Or, one that I can use on-line and save messages to my computer without compromising security. There are lots of tech smart folks on this site and I will appreciate any help.

sure, two products come to mind. Microsoft Outlook ($) and Mozilla Thunderbird (free). both will do what you want. i've used both and prefer Outlook. currently using Outlook 2007 on a Win7 desktop and a Win10 laptop but Outlook 2010 would also be a good choice. Outlook 365 is cloud based.

[ernieh]

I am far from being an email expert, but I have been very happy with Thunderbird. As I understand it, where your emails are saved depends on your mail program, not the server. IMAP protocol saves everything on the server. POP3 saves everything on your computer, but makes it more difficult to see messages on other devices. Even using IMAP, you can still save to folders on your local machine using Thunderbird.

You can use either protocol to communicate with the gmail server.

[Tim-n-Gina]

I use Mozilla Thunderbird on my computers, and BlueMail on my Android phone and tablet.
Either way I set up the email server options for each email account (I have several), so that it never deletes an email off of the email server unless I delete it from my device (The default is to delete after 14 days or so?)That way, I have a copy of each email on each device, and each email is also still sitting on the email server so that if I change devices, all of my old email gets downloaded to the new device The first time I sync up with the email server. I have years worth of emails on my primary email addresses that I can search through if I'm looking for something specific.
As far as Gmail is concerned, I'm not a fan of the service. Beyond the fact that you have to allow Google the permission to search your email and advertise to you according to the content of your emails, I'm not a fan of cloud-based services where I can't easily download a copy.
That said, I do have Gmail set up on my Android through bluemail and I can look at my email even with Wi-Fi and Cellular data turned off. So I do have a hard copy on my phone. Not 100% sure if the same applies to Thunderbird, but I will have to check that when I get to my laptop later today.

[magicbus]

Originally Posted by richard5933

Try looking in the folder marked "all mail" when you are in the Google G-Mail page online on a computer.

I have found that if I move an email to a folder and then I get another message on the same "thread", if I delete the second message from my inbox it also deletes the original message from the folder where I moved it! The only place I can then locate the original is in All Mail.


I keep meaning to switch to Thunderbird, it's been around forever and I used to use it, but I got lazy about leaving my email on the web, but the way Gmail handles saved mail is getting tiring.

[richard5933]

Originally Posted by magicbus

I have found that if I move an email to a folder and then I get another message on the same "thread", if I delete the second message from my inbox it also deletes the original message from the folder where I moved it! The only place I can then locate the original is in All Mail.

I keep meaning to switch to Thunderbird, it's been around forever and I used to use it, but I got lazy about leaving my email on the web, but the way Gmail handles saved mail is getting tiring.

You might be using some form of 'conversation view' instead of the traditional view. Depending on which app or client you're using, if you have 'conversation view' enabled the software tries to do these things for you. I always stick with the traditional view and keep as much control over where things are located myself.


Here's what the setting looks like in Gmail:

[magicbus]

Thanks. I’ll take a look at that setting.