Zentraler Informatikdienst

Managing e-mails in Thunderbird after expiration of u:account

For:  students    employees

With the expiration of their u:account, users will lose the right to use the e-mail service. If you have managed your e-mails with IMAP in Thunderbird, you will receive an error message stating that you do not have access to the University of Vienna’s mail server every time you try to access your e-mails.

This user guide will help you resolve this error message, back up your e-mails locally on your device in a standalone mailbox, and then delete your University of Vienna IMAP e-mail account.

Requirement

An IMAP e-mail account for the University of Vienna that has been set up in Thunderbird. If this is not the case, use the appropriate user guides to set up the account in Thunderbird:

Resolving error message

  1. Open Thunderbird.
  2. Click the menu icon ☰ in the top right corner.
  3. Select Account Settings.
  4. In the list on the left, click on the entry with your University of Vienna e-mail address, then click Server Settings.
  5. Deactivate:
    • Check for new messages at startup
    • Check for new messages every XX minutes

The error message should now only appear when you try to retrieve your e-mails manually (for example, via Get All New Messages). To avoid this, you can migrate the e-mails to the Local Folders area as described in the next section.

Backing up e-mails locally and deleting account

If you delete your e-mail account but want to keep the e-mails stored locally on your device, proceed as follows:

  1. Local Folders/Lokale Ordner – New Folder... – assign a name – Create Folder
  2. Drag Inbox to the new folder and check that all e-mails are there
  3. Menu ☰ – Account Settings – select university account – Delete

Detailed user guide

1. Creating a new folder

Right-click on Local Folders/Lokale Ordner mailbox and then click New Folder....

Assign a name to the new folder (e.g. univie.lokal) and click Create Folder.

2. Moving your inbox

Drag the Inbox of your e-mail address with the mouse into the newly created folder.

Then check that all e-mails have been copied by comparing the number of e-mails in the respective folders. This is displayed at the top next to the name of the folder or mailbox.

3. Deleting e-mail account

Now that your e-mails have been copied to Thunderbird’s Local Folders, you can delete your University of Vienna e-mail account:

  1. Click the menu icon ☰ in the top right corner of Thunderbird.
  2. Select Account Settings.
  3. In the list on the left, click the entry with your University of Vienna e-mail address.
  4. Click Delete in the top right corner.

In the following window, you will be asked if you want to remove the account. Click Remove. The corresponding e-mail account and all associated e-mails will be removed from Thunderbird – however, this does not affect the copies in the Local Folder/Lokale Ordner.

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