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MY EMAILS GONE MISSING DURING A TRANSFER!! HOW TO GET THEM BACK?

Thunderbird Import and export email
david replied
Fonemao Wu
Fonemao Wu

Hi everyone,

I ran into a major accidental data loss issue in Thunderbird and I'm hoping someone can guide me on how to safely recover the messages.

What happened:

I attempted to copy a large batch of old emails from my Yahoo IMAP account into local folders.

Thunderbird initially moved them because I accidentally pressed "Move-to" Realizing they were moved instead of copied, I pressed Ctrl + Z to undo that action after all those emails were moved from my inbox to my local folder. That undo command synced back through IMAP and wiped those messages from both the local view and the server.

Those emails just disappeared and I want to get them back. It's been 6 days. How to recover them?

Hi everyone, I ran into a major accidental data loss issue in Thunderbird and I'm hoping someone can guide me on how to safely recover the messages. What happened: I attempted to copy a large batch of old emails from my Yahoo IMAP account into local folders. Thunderbird initially moved them because I accidentally pressed "Move-to" Realizing they were moved instead of copied, I pressed Ctrl + Z to undo that action after all those emails were moved from my inbox to my local folder. That undo command synced back through IMAP and wiped those messages from both the local view and the server. Those emails just disappeared and I want to get them back. It's been 6 days. How to recover them?

All Replies (1)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor

If the messages were moved to Local Folders and then deleted, they should still be in the folder but marked deleted. No promises, but it's all we've got to work with. You can salvage them, but it's messy. Follow these steps closely:

  1. click help>troubleshootinginformation
  2. scroll to 'profile folders' and click 'open folder'
  3. exit thunderbird
  4. you are now in the profile.
  5. Click to Mail\Local Folders
  6. COPY the file to which you had moved the messages (this is in case of an error in following steps)
  7. using a text editor, such as Notepad, open the file (NOT the msf entry) where you moved the messages
  8. Locate the line before the first email text that reads "X-Mozilla-Status: 000X" (where 'X' is any character other than 0). Change the number to four zeros (″0000"). Repeat for all other messages. Save the document and exit Notepad
  9. Now, COPY the file to the Mail\Local Folders folder in the profile
  10. restart thunderbird and the messages should appear.
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