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I'm trying to recover a Mail folder from a zipped mail file

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Hello

I copied and pasted the local_folders from the profile folder ...\appdata\Roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<profile_name.default>\Mail to a different directory for backup purposes. I changed the Account Setting - local directory to point to the new location.

It worked just fine, so I deleted the original mail\local_folders, and cleared the recycle bin.

Or rather it worked just fine once. afterwards none of the local directories were displayed. I used some deleted file tools but could not recover the original Mail\local_folders. I did recover a zipped file with all the individual folders that were in Local_Folders and in each of them were the emails as individual .eml files. I put the unzipped files and folders into Local_Folders in the new directory and started Thunderbird.

Thunderbird created a new local_folders.sbd in the mail folder with all of the individual folders but none the email files.

I'm believe that I have a indexing issue, but do not know which file in the profile to delete. Deleting global-messages-db.sqlite seems to index the inbasket, but not the local_folder.

I will try to attach a doc with the screen shots.

Many thanks

Hello I copied and pasted the local_folders from the profile folder ...\appdata\Roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<profile_name.default>\Mail to a different directory for backup purposes. I changed the Account Setting - local directory to point to the new location. It worked just fine, so I deleted the original mail\local_folders, and cleared the recycle bin. Or rather it worked just fine once. afterwards none of the local directories were displayed. I used some deleted file tools but could not recover the original Mail\local_folders. I did recover a zipped file with all the individual folders that were in Local_Folders and in each of them were the emails as individual .eml files. I put the unzipped files and folders into Local_Folders in the new directory and started Thunderbird. Thunderbird created a new local_folders.sbd in the mail folder with all of the individual folders but none the email files. I'm believe that I have a indexing issue, but do not know which file in the profile to delete. Deleting global-messages-db.sqlite seems to index the inbasket, but not the local_folder. I will try to attach a doc with the screen shots. Many thanks

Chosen solution

I think we can close this, I found that the inportexporttools add on import all the .eml emails from one folder all at once. Works just fine.

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I'm including two pages of screen shots to help my text.

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I've figured out that I can create a new folder, open each unzipped mail message and copy it to the new folder.

Is there a global way to do this? I've got thousands of emails.

PS. it was my wife's account that I messed up. I'd really like to not sleep on the couch.

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Chosen Solution

I think we can close this, I found that the inportexporttools add on import all the .eml emails from one folder all at once. Works just fine.