I have used Thunderbird on my laptop for many years and have installed K-9 on my android phone (pixel 7 pro) just now so that I can see messages on my phone when I am not at my laptop. It receives mail OK. I want to copy my folder structure for received messages from thunderbird to K-9, Is that possible?
It is possible if you use IMAP since IMAP folders are on the server. Using IMAP on any email accounts that are (or may be) accessed on more than one device is preferable anyway. I presume that you are not using IMAP or your folders would have appeared on your K-9 Mail.
Thanks for the reply. I am using IMAP. But the folders all happen on my laptop. It uses many filters to arrange them in thunderbird. I want to use the same filters on K-9 but do nt want to laboriously type them all in.
I suppose that I have no idea what you are talking about then. What do you mean by filters and what are you actually wanting to accomplish?
Thunderbird allows setting message filters on all incoming messages. They are then directed to the appropriate folders. I have over 30 message filters and a similar number of folders. That is on my main email and I have several other emails also. I am trying to accomplish having K-9 on my android duplicate all this so that I can use either my laptop or my phone to do my email.
Unless you are using local folders in Thunderbird, your folder structure is mirrored to the server.
That said however, K-9 currently is unable to display nested folders correctly. You may end up with folders in a naming scheme such as “Business.CompanyA.Todo” rather than Business/CompanyA/Todo.
You can check by synchronising the folder list and make sure that all folders have a display class matching the class you have chosen for display.
This will not help you with the filters, but at least you can work with your email while mobile. As soon as you return to your laptop, Thunderbird will then apply all filters. When K-9 synchronises the next time you will find your email reorganised corresponding to your Thunderbird folder structure.
1 Like
Thank you for the more detailed explanation. Hopefully the reply from @tchara covering the key points has been helpful.
K-9 Mail does not have client-side filtering.
I have found that server-side filtering is a more effective solution when using multiple clients. It is dependent upon your email provider having Sieve (or something that provides similar capabilities) available on the server.
There is a Sieve add-on for (desktop) Thunderbird, but it doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with the Thunderbird release schedule. That is unfortunate issue that has long plagued many excellent Thunderbird add-ons.
I moved to a stand-alone Sieve configuration tool that is part of KDE. Roundcube webmail has an option for configuring Sieve filter rules that some providers enable.
The most obvious benefits of server-side filtering are only having one set of rules to maintain and having the filtering competed before you connect with any client.
I hope you are able to implement a solution that meets your needs.
1 Like
Thank you. Some of that surprised me. Still learning.
1 Like
Thanks. Useful to know.
1 Like