Cant' find old folders and emails. Help please, desperate!
Was using Thunderbird for a long time. Wife used PC, when I came back all my desktop icons were gone, and Thunderbird would not open, saying "Thunderbird is already running, have to close....." or words to that effect. Then when I closed it using task manager (Win 7), it then said "can not find profile".
I tried lots of things, but no way to get it to work. I uninstalled and reinstalled, created my old email account. It is now running.
However, when I recreated my email account name, it went and downloaded emails off the comcast server. I want all my old folders, emails, sent emails, etc to reappear!! I have tonds of email and need to access them,
I looked at global email files, and one new one was created that was 9MB, and another older one created back in Feb was 70MB. I put that one in place of the old one, and while it has more emails, it does not have nearly all of them, and none of my old folders appear with all the emails.
I tried both imap and pop, same situation. Seems like I am losing almost 9 months of emails!!!!
I tried import, but it won't open or give me any chance to look at file lcoations.
Any ideas on how to get my old folders, emails, etc back? I don't know exactly what happened while my wife used it.....but when I tried to fix things, I did not delete any data, and neither to the best of her recollection did she.
The folders, settings, emails, etc should still be on my PC, right?
I am getting really anxious, all my work emails are missing, any help very much appreciated.
Bruce brucem105@comcast.net
All Replies (4)
You are looking for your profile. You haven't said what kind of PC this is, so I'll assume Windows for now.
The profile is usually stored under
...\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
Look there, and into a subfolder named Profiles and hopefully there will be two or more subfolders, usually with names on the lines of
<random string>.default
The newest/youngest one is what you're currently using. The one before that, date wise, should be your original profile.
I always shudder at the use of shared computers. How you set your own up can be immensely personal, and sharing is always a compromise with attendant risks.
Is it possible the computer was just switched off without formal closing down of running programs and the OS?
Thanks. I see the profile, and opened it. It's just test telling Thunderbird what folder to look at for data. I changed the data to the older larger mail database and put that in the folder, but nothing really changed, my old date is still not back none of my old folders appear, etc.
The computer never shut down, although Thunderbird was closed and then I could not reopen it until I deleted and reinstalled.
I am running WIndows 7.
Bruce
brucem105 द्वारा सम्पादित
That sounds like you were looking at a file profiles.ini which is indeed an index to the working data files. I was curious about the contents of the Profiles folder as to how many profiles you now have and what we might discover about what has happened to damage it.
I can NOT thank you enough. By rooting around in those folders, I found a folder, and inbox/mail/folder directory, that clearly shows that all my folder names and mail within those folders still exist!
So I guess now my question is how do I get Thunderbird to look at that folder for all its data, and even all my settings like spell checking before sending, fonts chosen, etc instead of the completely generic new install profile that it is now using?
In my users/hp/appdata/roaming/thunderbird/profiles/wlnxki6j.default folder, there is a bunch of data and other folders. One of those subfolders, called mail/mail.comcast.net, has a large data file in it named inbox.sbd. That seems to be where all my old folder names and emails are stored. It's 335MB, and looks to be all my original Thunderbird data.
However, even though the profile.ini file is set to look in that wlnxki6j folder, Thunderbird still asks me to set up a new mail account, then goes to the comcast server to pull down whatever mail is there, and that's it. It does not display my old folder names and emails within those folder names that are stored in that inbox.sbd data file.
Do you know how I can get those original files and emails to show up in Thunderbird now that I have located them and know what folder they are in?
- UPDATE: By pointing the email account settings to that folder I found, I now have all my original email folders, and emails within those folders, back! THANK YOU!!!! ***
I also have two inboxes, which is weird, as I can't delete the second one. And a lot of duplicate emails, when I address an email it no longer automatically recognizes the recepient's email address after a few characters (as if each time I address an email it's for the first time ever in a fresh install, like the global email address book is gone), and my other email addresses are no longer in Thunderbird. Those are all secondary concerns to my main emai, which is back thanks to you!.
Thanks again so much.
brucem105 द्वारा सम्पादित