I presume this is a POP account. Can you post screenshot of the corrupted profile? And also of the backup profile? Assuming the basic structure is intact, the messages would probably be in the Mail\<POPaccountname> folder and any local folders would be in the Mail\Local Folders folder. The addressbooks would be abook.sqlite and history.sqlite (which can be readily imported into a new profile_.

Thank you so much, David for the quick reply!

1. Yes, I have several email accounts under the same domain, and one or two on a different domain.

2. Yes, they are all POP3/SMTP accounts.

3. I'm not exactly sure what a corrupted profile means — I'd appreciate it if you could provide a bit more detail.

4. I'm also unsure what a backup profile is — again, more details would be helpful.

5. This has been a real catastrophe (I still don’t know the cause), so for the sake of simplicity: 5.1 I don’t mind losing my SMTP/POP3 connection settings — I have all the details saved on paper. 5.2 I also don’t mind losing my address book.

6. What I’d love to achieve (either automatically or manually, possibly in a fresh Thunderbird installation if necessary, unless you recommend otherwise): 6.1 Automatically: Recreate the folder structure and transfer emails into the appropriate folders. I’m fine entering the connection settings manually. 6.2 Manually: Just import the files into Inbox and Senty, and manually sort them to their respective destination folders. I would recreate the folder structure and connection settings myself.

7. So far, I haven’t found any third-party software that can automate this type of recovery.

By the way, I’m starting to believe the crash may have been triggered by an update. It would be the second time Thunderbird caused such an issue. A few years ago, a similar thing happened, though the data loss was minimal.

Please let me know what information or files I should provide to support further investigation.

Once again, thank you very much for your help and involvement.

<edited for readability>

Okay, first step is to find the profile. Normally, it is at c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<profilename> The name of the specific profile is at c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles.ini - in this short text file is the pointer to what was the active profie. find the profiles.ini and it will identify the profile. Once you have that, locate it as it may be mostly intact. THEN, post screenshots of the Mail folder and the Mail\Local Folders folder and maybe the Mail\<accountname> folders. If you can find those, we can likely recover a lot. TIP: I have no idea of your backup process, but I encourage you to develop a new one. :) Once you share any of the possible screenshots, we can start the salvage process.

Hi David,

Additional Information: A1. I am using a portable version of Thunderbird. A2. The corrupted Thunderbird installation is on an external drive, different from its original location. A3. Once the recovery process succeeds, I plan to move the working version back to its original location. A4. The original location was not on drive C:\ (the system drive).

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Regarding:

1. C:\Users\<yourid>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profilename> I wasn’t able to find <profilename>. That path doesn’t exist on my system. I also tried manually searching for \Thunderbird\Profiles\ and \Profiles\ inside the Thunderbird Portable main folder and its subfolders — no luck. ➤ Where else should I look to determine the active profile path or pointer?

As for: 2. C:\Users\<yourid>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini ➤ I did find a profiles.ini file. ➤ I've included its content at the end of this post. (It looks quite messy to me...)

➤ Could you please advise on the next steps based on points 1 and 2 above?

On a Side Note: My backup process uses incremental backups weekly, and every 5th week I perform a full backup. I use FreeFileSync, and so far it’s been reliable — even for Thunderbird backups. 🙂

Thank you!

=============== profiles.ini =

[Install9C7A4ADBD253FA45] Default=Profiles/qntf5kry.default-release-3 Locked=1

[Profile2] Name=default-release IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/rfnxcnm8.default-release

[Profile1] Name=default-1459439936402 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/d8oj6eta.default-1459439936402

[Install55A0750F9D2A5961] Default=Profiles/ax4o2cok.default-release-2 Locked=1

[Profile0] Name=default-1443284759456 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/fbp1pyv3.default-1443284759456

[Install6980B959E27FFF26] Default=Profiles/5n9ljx3v.default-release-4 Locked=1

[Profile3] Name=default-release-1 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/dbzkhent.default-release-1

[Profile8] Name=default-release-6 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/sdtwrmtc.default-release-6

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1 Version=2

[Profile7] Name=default-release-5 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/58en9kwk.default-release-5

[Profile6] Name=default-release-4 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/5n9ljx3v.default-release-4

[Install2BA7F7580C1125DF] Default=Profiles/sdtwrmtc.default-release-6 Locked=1

[Profile5] Name=default-release-3 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/qntf5kry.default-release-3

[Profile4] Name=default-release-2 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/ax4o2cok.default-release-2

[Install48FB1198178C524B] Default=Profiles/58en9kwk.default-release-5 Locked=1

Ok, on a portable release, look in the folder named Data and there should be a folder named profile. The normal layout of the appdata\roaming structure does not apply to portables. That portable can be copied and used for a regular installation. Or, it can be used in another portable installation. If you do that, my suggested steps are: - copy the profile, once found, to a safe folder not involved with thunderbird - install the portable and start it and close it. - then, look for the data\profile folder to confirm its existence - now copy and paste your saved profile there are restart thunderbird.

If you have specific issue, please post back

Failure.

Here’s what I did:

1. I copied the profile folder from the crashed Thunderbird to a separate drive. 2. I installed a fresh portable version of Thunderbird on another drive. 3. I launched and then closed the newly installed Thunderbird. The profile folder was there. 4. I deleted that fresh profile folder and replaced it with the previously saved one from the crashed version. 5. I ran Thunderbird again, and I ended up with the exact same broken setup as before — the Inbox and other data still not displayed.

Hell broke loose after the crash, and I’m still struggling to contain the damage. I strongly believe you have recovery options available. Please advise.

Thank you!

There are no recovery features in Thunderbird. Recovering from crashes or other errors requires that the user do periodic backups. It appears the profile itself is corrupted. To recover, the process is to dig through the remaining parts to salvage what is there. If the accounts are POP, look for the Mail folder for message files. These often come in sets of two, such as inbox and inbox.msf. ignore the msf entries. Look also in the Mail\Local Folders for other message folders. If unsure, post screenshots of the folders.

Update: I recovered Thunderbird from the last quarter of last year, so the majority of emails are now in place.

I'm afraid I don't know how to implement your suggestion.

While not sure, I considered the following points:

1. I found the ImportExportTools NG plugin, and it seems it can convert MBOX files into selected folders in Thunderbird—one folder per MBOX file, processed one after another. I could then manually move the resulting .eml files into the appropriate folders. However, it seems the plugin doesn’t directly indicate whether messages belong to the Inbox or Sent folder. Q: Is this plugin a good option?

2. It seems that MBOX files may mix incoming and outgoing mail. My inspection didn’t lead to clear conclusions. Q: Is mixing true? 3. As a last resort, I could write a script to perform MBOX to .eml coversion and drag-and-drop individual emails to respective folders. Q: Is there a viable reason to do that?

4. I'd like to follow your recommendations. Q: Would you see alternative and better options?

Please recommend the next step.

Thank you!

Ok, an mbox file is a single thunderbird folder. For example, the inbox of an account is an mbox file, same for a sent folder. Each may have an associated msf file that is the index. These can be discarded as thunderbird will recreate the msf file. automatically. So, if you are using the import export addon (which is my recommendation), to salvage a folder just highlight Local Folder, rightclick and select the importexport option to import one of the mbox files. In doing that, thunderbird automatically creates the msf file for it. The eml files are embedded in the mbox, so there is no processing of eml files in this.

Thanks for your recommendations.

It seems that a single MBOX file may contain a mix of incoming and sent mails. Woud it be true, or sent and received mails are always kept in separate MBOX files?

Thanks!

Somehow, I'm not communicating this well. They are NEVER mixed. An mbox is always just one folder.

Been very busy so I'll be back when success/failure. As for now, thanks for your daily support which has been instrumental in catching the right end of the salvage rope.