(Re-sending in plain text!) I acquired a gmail address and intended to use that to transfer old emails to Thunderbird but was unsuccessful when setting up a gmail account on the old laptop. What I didn't mention when asking for help at the beginning of this week was that I possess a disc for MS Outlook 2007. (It was only used briefly but served its purpose at the time with another transfer from one laptop to another.) So I installed that on the old laptop, imported my old emails and exported them again to a backup which I transferred to my external hard drive. But setting up Outlook on the new laptop with an IMAP connection to my new gmail address failed too. Today a computer engineer has visited and experienced all the same difficulties. Eventually he clicked on 'less secure apps' ('Not recommended') which I had not been brave enough to try and everything is now hunky-dory. So I'm back in business and will stick with MS Outlook for the time being and gradually increase the use of my gmail address. I think I could have moved to Thunderbird via gmail if the 'less secure apps' had been ticked at the beginning. Thank you to everybody who gave me advice. Celia (Dodd) [email protected]