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Emails Deleted From Hosting Server, and now all folders are blank

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  • Last reply by Zenos
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tmltml
tmltml

I use the TB email client for my mail email account. I have it set to save/download a copy of any emails I save in a given folder to my local computer should something happen.

Well, last week for some reason my host company's auto clean up spam program decided to delete every single email in my email account. Not just the main one, but all email accounts I had setup. So the ones I used less frequently via web-mail, were all lost.

I have lot's of important emails saved in my main email account, however now when I open Thunderbird, all the folders are still there as usual but they are all totally empty.

Looking at the file where I think the data is kept I see files that match the folders. For example I have a folder called "Misc" and looking at the data files I see two files one named Misc and the other Misc.msf

I am hoping that these are all my emails. I noticed that of the two very similar files, one was quite larger in size. I see all the folders I have created have these files in this data folder.

Basically, what I am wondering is how do I restore the locally saved emails to their original folders so I can get things working as normal.

I would really appreciate the help, my host basically said sorry about your luck, and I am praying that I had T.B. set properly to save a copy of all saved emails to my local computer in case something like this should happen. I have many important emails saved that I would really hate to lose.

Thanking you in advance for your assistance.

I use the TB email client for my mail email account. I have it set to save/download a copy of any emails I save in a given folder to my local computer should something happen. Well, last week for some reason my host company's auto clean up spam program decided to delete every single email in my email account. Not just the main one, but all email accounts I had setup. So the ones I used less frequently via web-mail, were all lost. I have lot's of important emails saved in my main email account, however now when I open Thunderbird, all the folders are still there as usual but they are all totally empty. Looking at the file where I think the data is kept I see files that match the folders. For example I have a folder called "Misc" and looking at the data files I see two files one named Misc and the other Misc.msf I am hoping that these are all my emails. I noticed that of the two very similar files, one was quite larger in size. I see all the folders I have created have these files in this data folder. Basically, what I am wondering is how do I restore the locally saved emails to their original folders so I can get things working as normal. I would really appreciate the help, my host basically said sorry about your luck, and I am praying that I had T.B. set properly to save a copy of all saved emails to my local computer in case something like this should happen. I have many important emails saved that I would really hate to lose. Thanking you in advance for your assistance.

All Replies (1)

Zenos
Zenos

The naming is unfortunate. When Thunderbird makes a copy it is a cache, intended to make browsing of messages more efficient by avoiding having to download each message as you open it; it will refer instead to the local copy. Since folders in an IMAP-connected account still synchronize to the server, deletions at the server will be reflected into Thunderbird (and vice versa).

If you want local copies which are independent of the server, you need to copy or move the messages to somewhere outside of the IMAP-connected account's folders, and the Local Folders account in Thunderbird is provided for just this purpose.

Right now, your best hope is that the deleted messages are still in Thunderbird's folders.

Set Thunderbird to offline, so it doesn't pay any attention to what's on the server. Now you can seek any deleted messages. One approach is to use an add-on such as: https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/index-en.html#recDelMsg/

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Undelete_a_message