I am unclear on what you are reporting. You state the PC crashed before the problem, yet also state that Thunderbird was updating during the crash. A crash may have destroyed the profile. Did you have to restore Windows after the crash? Did you restore Thunderbird? Have you logged onto the account online to see if the messages are there? Is the account IMAP or POP? Please share more information, and we will offer whatever assistance we can. Thank you.

Hello David, Thank you for responding. I appreciate your willingness to help.

I didn't have to restore any software after the crash. I didn't have to restore the Thunderbird software. What was gone were all the messages from both email profiles. (earthlink and my university email (outlook))

I don't know for sure whether my earthlink was set up as IMAP or POP, either is possible, and I tried both in the hopes of restoring. When I provided my earthlink address and password, it downloaded whatever was still up in Earthlink webmail. It also downloaded older stuff from folders in webmail (which it never did before) and it also appears to have downloaded my spamblocker content, which it never did before.

In the past, I used to backup my Thunderbird profile on an external drive periodically, but have not done so in quite a long time (not smart - I used to be a programmer and I know better).

It did not seem to look for or find my earthlink content on my computer. None of my Thunderbird inbox subfolders were shown.

My inbox online does not hold mail indefinitely. I probably delete it periodically to free up space. It doesn't get deleted automatically when it is downloaded. I move email to trash which deletes its contents automatically at 2 weeks. I do have to delete mail in my spamblocker which goes to trash etc.

I hope this helps. My laptop has crashed multiple times recently - it generally recovers quite gracefully, generally only losing my currently open web pages. The reason I think that Thunderbird might have been in some process is because it came up looking different, as if there were new options available. That might have been because it could no longer find me. (It didn't find either profile).

Best Ellen

It appears that your Earthlink account is now ok. Since the account shows more than before, my guess is that this may have been POP and is now IMAP. You can check that by viewing the 'server settings' pane of the account. You did not mention the university account, so I will infer that is working, and also IMAP.

If there are old profiles still accessible, you can check that with these steps:

1. click help>troubleshootinginformation
2. scroll down to 'profiles' in left side and click 'about:profiles'
3. all profiles should now be listed. There is a button to open each one. Do that:
   • Now, click the Mail folder to see if there are any POP accounts. If so, click the account folder to see any message folders
   • Repeat that process in the Imapmail folder for any IMAP accounts
   • And, click the Mail\Local Folders folder to see if there are any miscellaneous folders
   • Repeat the above for each listed profile other than the default
4. If those searches discovered missing data, you can COPY to the Mail\Local folder of the default folder (Do this when Thunderbird is NOT RUNNING) and rename as needed to avoid duplication. This leaves you with restored content, but not attached to any account. Optionally, you can COPY the messages into the appropriate account folder.

Sounds great! I will try this within the next day or so. Thank you so much!

REMINDER of transfer process: BACKUP

1. ensure thunderbird is not running
2. enter %appdata% in search window on task bar and press Enter key
3. this should open windows file explorer in Appdata\roaming folder
4. highlight the Thunderbird folder and copy to external media

RESTORE

1. ensure thunderbird is installed and NOT running
2. enter %appdata% in search window on task bar and press Enter key
3. you should be in Appdata\roaming folder , copy&paste the exported Thunderbird folder there. This may prompt to overwrite an existing folder of same name. allow it
4. start thunderbird and all should be there

Hello David, Thank you for all your help. The old profile file is gone or sitting somewhere on the drive with no way to access it. In retrospect, I should have exited thunderbird when it came up empty. Maybe at that point the earthlink profile might have been still accessible in the appdata. But maybe not - I would think that thunderbird would have found it in the usual way if it were. Not catastrophic, but sad. I'll get back to backing up the profile regularly. Best Ellen

My regrets for the loss. I was glad to assist, regardless. regards, david