Introduction

This article will walk you through the process of importing your POP3 email account(s) from Thunderbird's email client over to Mailbird. We have equipped Mailbird with an import tool which is quick, easy, and user-friendly - it will allow you to start managing your email accounts directly in Mailbird without any delay.

To establish whether your email account(s) are POP3 or IMAP, please click here to find out more.

Importing your POP3 account from Thunderbird

To import your POP3 account from Thunderbird, please follow the steps outlined below:

• If this is the first account which you are connecting to Mailbird, you will be prompted to add an account after launching Mailbird for the first time (as shown in the screenshot a little further down).
  • Alternatively, if you have already connected one or more email accounts to Mailbird, begin by clicking on the Menu icon (i.e. the three horizontal lines in the top left-hand corner of Mailbird)
  • Then, click on Settings and go to Accounts tab.
  • To add an account, click on Add button.
    
    
• Once you are on the Add account window, please click on Import account from another email client.

• The Import existing accounts window will display all the accounts from other email clients which Mailbird could detect on your device, indicating in brackets the protocol for each (POP3 or IMAP).
  • Later in the process, we strongly recommend that you select the same protocol for your account in Mailbird as you have used for the account in Thunderbird, in order to avoid any discrepancies between how each email client handles your emails.

• If Mailbird is able to detect your account server settings, it will populate these automatically for you, but you can also click on "Edit server settings" in order to manually add your email account as POP3 by selecting this in the Server Type field from the drop-down menu (see screenshot below).
  • If you do not do this, then your account will be added as IMAP by default, but if you are happy with this, then you can proceed to the next step.
    
    
    
    
• After selecting POP3 as your email protocol, you can adjust additional settings for the POP3 protocol based on your own personal requirements, as shown in the image below:
  
  
• Afterwards, click on the Continue button and complete the remaining steps.

Please note that if you selected OAuth 2.0 as the authentication instead of Username & Password (which is highly recommended if supported by your email provider), you may be asked to log into your email account using an internet browser to complete the authentication process. This is perfectly normal, and so you should proceed in doing so if prompted.

Additional information

• All your emails from the imported Thunderbird account will be moved over, including any folders which you created in Thunderbird.
• Local Folders are not a part of the import however, since they are considered as a separate account in Thunderbird, and therefore not associated with any particular email account by Thunderbird.
  • If you would like to know how to import these as well, then please click here.
• Thunderbird's Archive command moves emails to a folder called Archives. Mailbird will import the Archives folder, however emails archived using Mailbird will be placed in the folder called Archived or All (depending on the naming used by your account provider). 
• Any emails left on your email server will be downloaded to your Inbox after the import process has been completed. To check if and what email messages you have left on the email server, please log in to your account using your webmail interface (e.g. gmail.com, hotmail.com, etc.).
• Since the POP3 protocol does not support nor recognise folders on the email server, all emails from folders located on the email server will be downloaded to your Inbox.

And that's it, you can now start to manage your POP3 email account from Mailbird! 

Please let us know if you have any more questions, or if you require any additional guidance - we are always happy with anything all! You can reach out to us by clicking here.