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old emails suddenly disappeared after move from old computer

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  • Last reply by cliveO

cliveO
cliveO
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Yesterday I moved my email account from my old computer OS ubuntu 10.04 to a computer OS linux mint17. I copied the thunderbird ****.default folder c/w the profile.ini. All went perfectly with my email account springing up with all my emails going back a couple of years. Hearty slap on the back until tody when I switched on to look at emails and found only one, a new one. All other emails have disappeared. I have read several posts and finally found the "archive" button and moved it onto the Tool bar, but my old emails haven't appeared in it. Can someone please tell me where they are and how I can retrieve them. The server type has changed itself to IMAP (was Pop3 on the ubuntu set up). I am not good with technical computer language. Thank you.

Yesterday I moved my email account from my old computer OS ubuntu 10.04 to a computer OS linux mint17. I copied the thunderbird ****.default folder c/w the profile.ini. All went perfectly with my email account springing up with all my emails going back a couple of years. Hearty slap on the back until tody when I switched on to look at emails and found only one, a new one. All other emails have disappeared. I have read several posts and finally found the "archive" button and moved it onto the Tool bar, but my old emails haven't appeared in it. Can someone please tell me where they are and how I can retrieve them. The server type has changed itself to IMAP (was Pop3 on the ubuntu set up). I am not good with technical computer language. Thank you.

Chosen solution

Thank you Matt for your reply, I looked at 'Help menu > troubleshotting information and click on the show button for the profile folder' and that is the one I copied over from the old computer. The problem arose from Thunderbird automatically setting up my new email account with IMAP when my old account (in Thunderbird 1.5) was pop3.

With help from: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/email/change-pop3-account-to-imap-or-imap-to-pop3, I have reset the account to pop3 and then exchanged the old profile folder (abc123yz.default) a second time and now I have all my old emails again. So problem solved!

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Matt
Matt
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Ok account type can not be changed No way. No how. So I am guessing at some part it has asked for your email address and you provided it.

Your mention of the profiles.ini file worries me as the references it contains are relative to it's location is a folder name has changed then it will point to the wrong place.

Help menu > troubleshotting information and click on the show button for the profile folder. I think you will find it is not the same folder that comes up as that which you copied.

cliveO
cliveO Question owner
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Chosen Solution

Thank you Matt for your reply, I looked at 'Help menu > troubleshotting information and click on the show button for the profile folder' and that is the one I copied over from the old computer. The problem arose from Thunderbird automatically setting up my new email account with IMAP when my old account (in Thunderbird 1.5) was pop3.

With help from: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/email/change-pop3-account-to-imap-or-imap-to-pop3, I have reset the account to pop3 and then exchanged the old profile folder (abc123yz.default) a second time and now I have all my old emails again. So problem solved!