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Downloaded emails in INBOX suddenly impossibly scrambled

  • 2 replies
  • 3 have this problem
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  • Paskiausią atsakymą parašė Wayne Mery

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For the second time in two years almost all of the emails in my INBOX (around 2000) were suddenly scrambled. The body of every email has been assigned to a different sender (usually one about 1-5 emails ahead of it in the chronological list), and the "From:/Subject:/Reply to:/..." that sits just above the body is completely gone. The body of each email has been stripped of any features and formats, like pictures, color borders,... All corrupted.

This might have happened when my computer automatically shut down (because its sleep/hibernate feature only work intermittently, but that's another story), but I think it happened when unattended for two hours. It was not sleeping/hibernating during that time. Did I do something wrong? Fixes? I have a Dell Inspiron M101Z. Thank you.

For the second time in two years almost all of the emails in my INBOX (around 2000) were suddenly scrambled. The body of every email has been assigned to a different sender (usually one about 1-5 emails ahead of it in the chronological list), and the "From:/Subject:/Reply to:/..." that sits just above the body is completely gone. The body of each email has been stripped of any features and formats, like pictures, color borders,... All corrupted. This might have happened when my computer automatically shut down (because its sleep/hibernate feature only work intermittently, but that's another story), but I think it happened when unattended for two hours. It was not sleeping/hibernating during that time. Did I do something wrong? Fixes? I have a Dell Inspiron M101Z. Thank you.

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I'd make a backup first.

The classic solution is to select the affected folder, right-click it, select Properties and then Repair Folder. If many folders are affected, it can be quicker to close Thunderbird, locate its profile and delete all the *.msf files.

I get my wrist slapped for talking about this, but I can't see the reason for, or any advantage in letting messages pile up in the Inbox. I keep my Inbox empty, by filing messages in specific folders (related to topic, project or sender), and never have these folder corruption issues.

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What version are you running?

When it happened previously, what were the circumstances?

Is this a pop account?