For many years, my wife and I have each used Thunderbird on our own computers. Several weeks ago, when my wife turned Thunderbird on, a new screen appeared that mentioned… (read more)
For many years, my wife and I have each used Thunderbird on our own computers. Several weeks ago, when my wife turned Thunderbird on, a new screen appeared that mentioned account setup and directed her to set up her existing email address. When she did, a home screen appeared that was significantly different than the one she had been using. But more than that, she lost all her saved emails and Thunderbird started to reload emails. The reloading ended with over 1800 “new” emails whose dates reached back for almost a year. Since then, after some work, the home page has been returned to its earlier look; downloading, sending and deleting are working as before. Missing are a few important, personal subfolders.
We’ve tried a few things that we thought/hoped would return us to the point before everything went crazy. That hasn’t happened. Recently, we looked at the Profiles folder on each of our computers and saw something that, I think, is unusual and, I hope, might provide a way get her back at least some of what was lost.
The route to my Profiles is
C: > Users > Me > AppData > Roaming > Thunderbird > Profiles
In Profiles are two folders, one ends with .default and the other with .default-release.
The only thing in the default folder is the file times.json. The default-release folder contains many files and folders, including the Mail folder. The Mail folder contains two subfolders: Local Folders and mail.comcast.net.
On my wife’s computer, there is only one folder inside Profiles. The name ends in .default. Inside that folder is the Mail folder. Within the Mail folder are six subfolders: Local Folders, Local Folders-1, Local Folders-2, mail.comcast.net, mail.comcast.net-1, mail.comcast.net-2.
The Date Modified date for Local Folders is probably the date the problem started. Date Modified for Local Folders-1, mail.comcast.net and mail.comcast.net-1 is the same: a few days after the date for Local Folders. The dates for Date Modified for Local Folders-2 and mail.comcast.net-2 are the same, and change daily.
I’m hoping/assuming that the missing, personal subfolders are in one, or more, of Local Folders, Local Folders-1, mail.comcast.net, mail.comcast.net-1. What I’m asking here is: does anyone know of a way to easily locate and recover the subfolders and, then, move them into the correct location in Local Folders-2and/or mail.comcast.net-2.
Thanks for taking the time to read this long story.