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How to restore "lost" email folders

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Long, sad story. I may have lost 25 years' worth of Thunderbird email folders - spanning most of my medical/academic career, plus personal communications (including exchanges with friends now dearly-departed), my medical records, purchase/guarantee receipts, ticket purchases, amazon, etc etc. I tried to activate the free Nomorobo on Optimum/Cablevision unsuccessfully, and in a series of tech support calls, following their directions (in retrospect eggregiously wrong), I was told to change my thunderbird password, then delete and reactivate my thunderbird account. When I did that, all my previous folders (about 150 folders) stored on my computer disappeared. This is a major data repository for the last 25 years of my life. Now, I can receive and send messages (after another several hours of "support") but my old records are gone. Can they be restored, maybe with File History? or are there any other potential things I could try. They were not backed up anywhere else, so far as I can tell. I'm not even sure where the current (almost empty inbox, sent and trash) folders are kept.

Long, sad story. I may have lost 25 years' worth of Thunderbird email folders - spanning most of my medical/academic career, plus personal communications (including exchanges with friends now dearly-departed), my medical records, purchase/guarantee receipts, ticket purchases, amazon, etc etc. I tried to activate the free Nomorobo on Optimum/Cablevision unsuccessfully, and in a series of tech support calls, following their directions (in retrospect eggregiously wrong), I was told to change my thunderbird password, then delete and reactivate my thunderbird account. When I did that, all my previous folders (about 150 folders) stored on my computer disappeared. This is a major data repository for the last 25 years of my life. Now, I can receive and send messages (after another several hours of "support") but my old records are gone. Can they be restored, maybe with File History? or are there any other potential things I could try. They were not backed up anywhere else, so far as I can tell. I'm not even sure where the current (almost empty inbox, sent and trash) folders are kept.

Chosen solution

Thanks to everybody who tried to help. It looks like I actually caused more problems incorrectly following advice. I found somebody who was willing to fix the problem remotely. Things are mostly back to normal, with only about 10% of the files (randomly) unavailable. My reading is that if you almost know what to do, a forum like this is perfect. For someone like me, not a good idea. If anybody would like me to describe how to do a thyroid biopsy, I will, but it would not be a good idea to go home and then try to do it. AVE ATQUE VALE

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Al I do not have the time to reread this thread but let me give you some advice. Backup your ENTIRE TB profile folder, maybe even another copy to an offline disk. If you make regular back ups you could just recover from one, I am guessing you do not do this. With so much at stake an external drive (that you take offline after a backup) and an disk imaging program would be an excellent investment. I recommend the free version of Macrium Reflect.

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Chosen Solution

Thanks to everybody who tried to help. It looks like I actually caused more problems incorrectly following advice. I found somebody who was willing to fix the problem remotely. Things are mostly back to normal, with only about 10% of the files (randomly) unavailable. My reading is that if you almost know what to do, a forum like this is perfect. For someone like me, not a good idea. If anybody would like me to describe how to do a thyroid biopsy, I will, but it would not be a good idea to go home and then try to do it. AVE ATQUE VALE

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So, I'm curious. How were you helped? What did you have to do?

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