[ubuntu-za] Gmail and Thunderbird

[Charl Wentzel]

Hi Guys

I have a bit of a funny issue.  I recently upgraded my Wife from Ubuntu 
11.xx to Mint 16.  (She didn't like Unity).  One of the major changes 
was the switch from Evolution Mail to Thunderbird.  (I tried the new 
Evolution, but couldn't solve the TNEF issue).

The problem is that she has several devices downloading her emails; 
blackberry phone, tablet and her laptop.  But for some reason when an 
email is downloaded by the her phone of tablet first, it is not 
downloaded by her laptop!

It looks like some POP issue.  It seems that once a device downloads the 
email, it is marked as "downloaded" on the server and then Thunderbird 
doesn't download it (again).  But why did Evolution not have this 
problem?  To get all the emails downloaded in the first place, I needed 
to "enable POP for all emails" under the Gmail settings.  Without it, it 
only downloads some emails, which I think confirms my theory.

I don't have this issue with any other POP accounts on Thunderbird, and 
I also have several devices (3) downloading emails from several POP 
accounts (5).  So it seems specific to Thunderbird and Gmail.

Anybody with any ideas? I haven't found something on the Internet that 
helps yet.

Regards
Charl

PS: I'm pretty certain IMAP will solve the problem, but that's not an 
option.  Thunderbird creates creates a confusing set of folders for a 
Gmail account, which is goint to increase the amount of "support" I need 
to give.  Not going there! ;-)