I'm assuming you used an imap mail account for a specific email address which was either for a hosted website or a previous ISP.

All emails are stored on their servers and imap provided a remote access to see subscribed folders on the server.

Prior to changing servers and stopping the service, you would have needed to synchronise imap folders for offline use to get copies of all emails downloaded to Thunderbird profile, then in Offline mode to prevent any further synchronising, get copies of all emails into 'Local Folders' mail account folders. These folders do not synch with anything and are stored in profile.

If you kept the email address and just switched the server settings, then you pointed your imap mail account to look at a different server which most likely did not contain old emails as it was new server, new ISP. So your Inbox would have been completely updated to show only the new Inbox.

If you have only just does this, I would suggest you immedately switch back to old server settings and try to get access to download those emails; and hope that you are permitted access given that you may not be paying for that service.

Did you ever use Windows Search to locate emails? If yes, it may be possible that you have *.mozmsg folders in your profile mail account.

Please check to see if you have any folders with .mozmsg extension in this location:

• C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\ ImapMail\imap mail account name
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird

Note: The AppData folder is folder is a hidden folder; to show hidden folders, open a Windows Explorer window and choose "Organize → Folder and Search Options → Folder Options → View (tab) → Show hidden files and folders".

Hi Toad Hall, thanks for your note. So I had Frontier before and switched to TDS. I am no longer accessing Frontier through Thunderbird, but can still get new messages on Frontiers web mail, but all the old emails from say Nov / Dec had been deleted. I followed the address line and found the folder / files with all the old emails ( which was a pop3 ). I was trying to determine how when I open Thunderbird I get it to access the old folder / file ? I have a 2nd computer with TB on it and it has emails up til last August. If I copy the folder / files from this unit over to the 2nd computer and load it in there, I could use that 2nd unit to catch up on emails from the past months or so that need attention. From your msg I did not do the synchronaise option. I could change the server settings back to the old setup on Frontier and wonder if I do should I be able to access the old emails. Any thoughts ? Thanks, Scott

Hi again Toad Hall, I followed your 2nd email as well and I did find the folder but it is under a pop.mail.yahoo.com. It is 509 MB in size as I kept many emails over the years. My question is how do I open TB and use this file? Do I have to go into account settings and change it back to the frontier settings? I don't need to go back on line as I have my new address working with current emails. I just need to get back to the emails from the past few weeks that I need to follow up with. How do I go about doing this? Thanks again, Scott

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

Install th add-on, create a folder in "Local Folders" to hold your mail. Select the folder and right click it. Select importexporttools from the right click menu

select import mbox file from the import export tools menu and import from the location you have identified.