Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I marked my Sent folder to be used in offline mode, and asked the messages to be downloaded. I saw the status bar show my messages being downloaded.
But I can't figure out where the messages were stored.
My profile folder doesn't have any new files, nor any that start with the word Sent:
~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/l5z5ge4s.default/Mail# ls -l Local\ Folder
# Nothing here named Sent.msf, or Sent.sbd
Where should I look for my downloaded messages?
I'd say you are looking at the right place.
I've configured Thunderbird to use IMAP to sync with Gmail. In that scenario, my sent emails are located at
/Users/<username>/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<randomcharacters>.default/ImapMail/imap.googlemail.com/\[Gmail\].sbd/Sent\ Mail
This SuperUser answer has a screenshot which shows how to look up the location for a particular account:
