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emails not displaying in inbox after backup and restore

  • 5 replies
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  • Last reply by christ1

pjgallaver
pjgallaver
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I have 5 email accounts. 4 of these accounts are active accounts still receiving emails. The 5th account is no longer actively receiving emails but has emails in the inbox.

i backed up the entire profile in older machine as seen in Help\Trubleshooting Information\Profile Folder selection.

I installed Thunderbird (current version) into new machine, closed Thunderbird and replaced all folders & files in new machine with those from backup from older machine.

When opening Thunderbird on new machine, all data is present for the 4 email accounts currently receiving emails but no emails are present in inbox (like before) for the account no longer receiving emails. The email account name does display with settings.

Please let me know how to resolve.

Thanks

I have 5 email accounts. 4 of these accounts are active accounts still receiving emails. The 5th account is no longer actively receiving emails but has emails in the inbox. i backed up the entire profile in older machine as seen in Help\Trubleshooting Information\Profile Folder selection. I installed Thunderbird (current version) into new machine, closed Thunderbird and replaced all folders & files in new machine with those from backup from older machine. When opening Thunderbird on new machine, all data is present for the 4 email accounts currently receiving emails but no emails are present in inbox (like before) for the account no longer receiving emails. The email account name does display with settings. Please let me know how to resolve. Thanks

All Replies (5)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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What's the account type of the 5th account - POP or IMAP?

pjgallaver
pjgallaver Question owner
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christ1,

Thanks for your help. Mail server type is IMAP.

christ1
christ1
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For that IMAP account, was synchronization enabled? https://support.mozilla.org/kb/imap-synchronization

In other words, did you download an offline copy of your messages from the server to your computer for all folders of the account?

pjgallaver
pjgallaver Question owner
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christ1, 

For Synchronization & storage section, message synchronizing is  "check marked" for keep messages for this account on this computer.  For disk space below, synshronize all messages locally regardless of age is selected.

I want to mention again, this email server is longer active as it is an old email account that had messages in the inbox back in 2013. Whenever I restated the old machine, I was still able to see these email in the inbox from 2013.

When performing a backup of entire profile, I am assuming this backup would include emails from the inbox that I was still seeing even though email server has not been connected in 4 years.

Can I not just Thunderbird to refer to a local database only as it is no longer possible to communicate with this no longer valid email server?

Thanks

christ1
christ1
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With 'Synchronization' enabled mail files underneath the IMAP account should have a size greater than 0 bytes. Mail files are the ones without a file extension, e.g. 'Read', or 'Sent'. Mail files are text files, so you can open them with a text editor to check the messages exist.

You can restore those mail files from the backup to your 'Local Folders' account. Make sure Thunderbird is closed when doing that. Note, you may need to manually create subfolders in Thunderbird before if you do have any.