Import AOL Mail into Thunderbird Account With Hassle Free Solution

Approved By Anuraag Singh

Published On April 17th, 2018

Reading Time 5 Minutes Reading

Are you looking for a method to import AOL Mail into Thunderbird email client? Have you ever tried any manual solution? Here, in this write-up, we have come up with a reliable solution that will help to add AOL email to Mozilla Thunderbird in an absolute manner.

In today’s arena, with the increasing popularity of internet among the users, the mode of cross-communication is online. Even though there are many email applications that make it easy for users to share important data across the globe. But, sometimes users prefer to switch from one email platform to another one. One of the most frequent queries of the user is to import AOL Mail to Thunderbird account. Therefore, in this blog, we will discuss a tremendous method to migrate AOL mail in Thunderbird. Before that, let us discuss the major reasons for transferring AOL email to Thunderbird.

Furthermore, a user can go for a reliable third party tool, titled as, AOL Mail Backup software to import AOL Mail into Thunderbird without any data loss.

An Overview of AOL and Thunderbird Application

AOL Mail: AOL is an acronym of America Online. It is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a unit of Verizon Communications. It supports POP3, SMTP and IMAP protocol and also provides protection from the Spam and Viruses. The domain names of AOL looks like @aol.com, @wow.com, etc. In addition, it also supports SSL or HTTPS protocol after login.

Mozilla Thunderbird: Thunderbird is an open-source email client that provides several features such as contacts, encryption, multiple profile configurations, etc. It also supports POP, IMAP, LDAP, MIME protocols. In addition, it supports cross-platform structure, that means it can run on a variety of operating systems. It is one of the safest mailing services, even French military uses Thunderbird due to its security features.

Reasons to Import AOL Mail into Thunderbird

There are some reasons for which a user need to transfer or import AOL email to Mozilla Thunderbird are listed below:

When a user has to creates a copy of emails from the cloud storage, like AOL application on the system. Then, they require a desktop based client(Thunderbird) to accessed those emails copies.
In the case of accessing multiple email accounts on one email client, then Thunderbird is very much beneficial. A user can configure multiple email profile in Mozilla Thunderbird.
Sometimes, emails cannot be accessed in AOL due to the cloud server failure. At that time, a user has to import AOL Mail into Thunderbird MBOX format.
Saving data in the cloud is advantageous but we cannot ignore the data breaching issues related to the cloud storage. Then, it becomes important to convert AOL mail to some desktop-based application like Mozilla Thunderbird.
If a user’s AOL account is inactive for 90 days, then the account automatically gets deactivated. Furthermore, if this inactivity continues for 180 days, the account gets permanently deleted.

Manual Approach to Add AOL Email to Mozilla Thunderbird

Here, we have mentioned two manual tricks to transfer emails from AOL Mail in Thunderbird. The following methods are mentioned below; make sure follow each and every step carefully:

Method 1: Import AOL Mail into Thunderbird Email Client

Open Mozilla Thunderbird application and select Tools, a drop-down menu will appear. Select the Account Settings option from the menu.
Note:- Press the Alt key when the menu bar cannot be seen in Thunderbird.
After that, click Account Actions option and select Add Mail Account from the given menu list.
Mention the credentials such as name, AOL email address and password in the Username, Email Address and Password section respectively. Click on Continue.
Now, the IMAP(remote folders) protocol is to be selected. If a user selects the POP3 protocol, then new emails will be download from AOL but it will not synchronize the actions and folders.
Once the above step is done, Click on Done and then OK button.

Method 2: Import AOL Mail into Thunderbird Application

Launch Thunderbird mail application and go to Tools. Select the Account Settings and then Add Mail Account. Click on Continue.
Provide the credentials such as name, AOL email ID in the corresponding given fields. Click on Continue for further process.
Choose IMAP (remote folders) as an incoming server corresponding to the Incoming server field. Click on Manual config.
Manually enter the settings as follows:

Incoming: IMAP–> imap.aol.com
Outgoing: SMTP–> smtp.aol.com

Note:- The Port number for IMAP is 993 or 143 and 587 for SMTP protocol.

Verify the Username and password.
Select the AOL account in the account list and mention the AOL email in the Outgoing server as “smtp.aol.com”. After that, click on OK.

Shortcomings of Manual Method

The above-stated direct method is very tedious for the novice user. The configuration of IMAP or POP3 is also complicated for a non-technical person. In addition, it will take a huge amount of time while dealing with the migration of bulk AOL mails to Thunderbird. Any mishandling in the procedure may lead to data loss issue also. Hence, dealing with the manual procedure very carefully.

Final Words

This write up will help the users to import AOL mail into Thunderbird account. Also, we have mentioned the reasons that allow a user to migrate AOL email to Mozilla Thunderbird. Furthermore, the simple manual procedures are described but due to its limitations, a professional tool is also recommended i.e. AOL Email Archiver tool. Hence, according to the user requirement, they can choose any of them.