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Old Emails Disappeared After Repair

nedoking2000
nedoking2000

Good day all,

I had some old emails stored in a Local folder.

While I could see the the header information shows up in the view panel (from address, subject, date, etc), I could NOT see the contents of the email (the preview window is entirely blank), and attempting to copy the email failed.

I completed the 1st Repair detailed in this link as it seemed to be the exact same issue: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1515421

When It was completed, all except four of the old emails disappeared. The four remaining files can be opened & read (so the repair worked on those four).

Examining the Inbox mbox file as explained in Repair #2 (link above) showed only the data for the four remaining files.

My question - does anyone know of a way to 1) restore the emails that vanished?, and 2) after restoring the emails that vanished, how to be able to read them?

I have a back-up of the entire profile that was made before the repair - so I can pull specific files from that back-up and "start over" if need be.

Thx!

Good day all, I had some old emails stored in a Local folder. While I could see the the header information shows up in the view panel (from address, subject, date, etc), I could NOT see the contents of the email (the preview window is entirely blank), and attempting to copy the email failed. I completed the 1st Repair detailed in this link as it seemed to be the exact same issue: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1515421 When It was completed, all except four of the old emails disappeared. The four remaining files can be opened & read (so the repair worked on those four). Examining the Inbox mbox file as explained in Repair #2 (link above) showed only the data for the four remaining files. My question - does anyone know of a way to 1) restore the emails that vanished?, and 2) after restoring the emails that vanished, how to be able to read them? I have a back-up of the entire profile that was made before the repair - so I can pull specific files from that back-up and "start over" if need be. Thx!

Chosen solution

christ1 said
Thunderbird uses the mbox file format for storing messages, i.e. all messages are stored in a single file. So you can't restore individual messages, but just all messages in a directory. Before any restore attempts, close Thunderbird, and create a backup your Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile Then restore the mail file which is supposed to contain the missing messages. Mail files are the ones without a file extension. Do not restore any .msf files, and also delete the corresponding .msf file which still exists in the profile. The .msf file will be re-created automatically. Of course all this assumes the mail file corruption, which erased your messages, was not yet present at the time the backup has been created.

Thank you for the info. I used my oldest backup to replace the existing mail file, then deleted the .msf file.

Unfortunately, when I restarted Thunderbird, only the same four emails were visible. Apparently there is a corruption issue that has been around for a while.

Thank you once again!

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All Replies (2)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Thunderbird uses the mbox file format for storing messages, i.e. all messages are stored in a single file. So you can't restore individual messages, but just all messages in a directory. Before any restore attempts, close Thunderbird, and create a backup your Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile

Then restore the mail file which is supposed to contain the missing messages. Mail files are the ones without a file extension. Do not restore any .msf files, and also delete the corresponding .msf file which still exists in the profile. The .msf file will be re-created automatically. Of course all this assumes the mail file corruption, which erased your messages, was not yet present at the time the backup has been created.

nedoking2000
nedoking2000 Question owner

Chosen Solution

christ1 said
Thunderbird uses the mbox file format for storing messages, i.e. all messages are stored in a single file. So you can't restore individual messages, but just all messages in a directory. Before any restore attempts, close Thunderbird, and create a backup your Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile Then restore the mail file which is supposed to contain the missing messages. Mail files are the ones without a file extension. Do not restore any .msf files, and also delete the corresponding .msf file which still exists in the profile. The .msf file will be re-created automatically. Of course all this assumes the mail file corruption, which erased your messages, was not yet present at the time the backup has been created.

Thank you for the info. I used my oldest backup to replace the existing mail file, then deleted the .msf file.

Unfortunately, when I restarted Thunderbird, only the same four emails were visible. Apparently there is a corruption issue that has been around for a while.

Thank you once again!

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