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I am using gmail on Thunderbird on Ubuntu 19.10. I configured the Thunderbird for IMAP access with gmail and emails were probably downloaded as at the time of taking screenshot download was happening. I do not know the location but I can see all the folders. Here is a screenshot. thunderbird downloading all emails my gmail inbox is full 13 gb out of 15 gb. https://superuser.com/questions/1502126/13-66-gb-out-of-15-gb-used-in-gmail-delete-emails-that-consumed-space

Some one suggested me to use Thunderbird. Now I have configured Thunderbird to use with gmail now how to I go deleting thousands of emails I have to find some emails which might be having photos or documents which might be heavy in size. Is there an easy way or script to do the same any link to a GitHub script for sorting out emails based on size or attachments etc. Which I can try in Ubuntu 19.10.

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Within Thunderbird, you can move files out of your gmail account to a local folder. Before proceeding, you should empty any Gmail folder except "Gmail - All Mail", such that all mail appears only in the latter. The safest way to do that will be from the gmail interface: just remove any labels of any email you want to move out. Then you can move selected mail from "All Mail" to a local folder using either drag and drop or, perhaps better and more precise, using right-click, move. If you do many files at a time, chances are real that the process gets interrupted. The result is that some mails are copied over to the local folder, but still remain on the gmail account as well, leaving your transaction in an inconsistent state.

The by far better approach, however, would be to use the google service Google Takeouts that is connected to your account. This way, your email, or selected email, is archived into an mbox email file, which you then can download from the Google Takeouts service as a zip file. mbox happens to be the format that is used by Thunderbird. You can then place the mbox file under "Local Folders" while Thunderbird is not running. When you start Thunderbird, Thunderbird will index the file and present it as a folder under "Local Folders". The folder will have the name of the mbox file.

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I would probably change the access to pop3, so you will download all mails to your local computer, so you don't have the gmail size constrains?

You may than start to define filters to clean up your old directories.

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All the options you require can be found within the search messages dialog (ctrl+shift+f or from the menu: Find > Search Messages) in Thunderbird.
You will be able to create a search based on size and/or attachment, you will probably find the age option useful too.

You can save these searches as search folders for future use.

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  • how to search email with attachements only sender can by any one I remember or may not remember who sent me what. Dec 14, 2019 at 3:53

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