Re: Guilty Secret
I had the same problem, an old email account from the 90s which had loads of emails in it I wanted to keep, but without leaving it populated. I did this:
1. Set up the account as an IMAP account in Thunderbird.
2. Download all emails
3. Change the username for the account in Thunderbird to something completely wrong (e.g. paulf@yahoo.com becomes aapaulfaa@yahoo.com). This will prevent it accessing Yahoo's servers so it can't download any more updates.
4. Wipe the yahoo account of all emails etc.
5. With the preserved account user name changed, Thunderbird will let you add the account again with the correct user name so you can have continued IMAP access. This is much preferable to using the web interface.
6. Thunderbird will grumble when it can't access the corrupted user name of the preserved account but all the emails will be there to read off line.
Odd thing about Yahoo is they (or at least used to) charge for POP access, but IMAP access is free and always there, presumably for their App to use?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
