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All Mails lost from a particular email id during Thunderbird crash. Copying old backup doesnt work !!

  • 6 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by Matt

TejasMehta
TejasMehta
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I have a profile with 7 different emails accounts from different different server. 4 email from office server, 2 from Gmail -- all configured on IMAP and 1 email on POP3.

Recently my Thunderbird crashed due to low battery windows shutdown. Upon starting, all mails under 2 of the old emails ids are missing. I can only see the heading of email in TB but not the individual mails. Both these are from my older server which is no more active(so cant download/sync again) but has huge amount of mails which are very important.

I have a copy of these emails on a backup location. So i copied these two email folders from the backup location to current location and started TB. But it still does not work, and does not show the emails. What i noticed is that after copying the mail folder from backup location to current profile location, it shows the inbox file with large file size,,,,,, but after starting TB these large files seemingly gets overwritten by blank ones with no emails into it.

I have 1 profile which has 7 emails configured into it. So I dont want any changes in other emails (apart from these 2). So i have not copied the entire Profile folder but only copied subfolders related to these 2 email accounts.

Please help restoring the OLD mails.

Best Regards, Tejas Mehta

I have a profile with 7 different emails accounts from different different server. 4 email from office server, 2 from Gmail -- all configured on IMAP and 1 email on POP3. Recently my Thunderbird crashed due to low battery windows shutdown. Upon starting, all mails under 2 of the old emails ids are missing. I can only see the heading of email in TB but not the individual mails. Both these are from my older server which is no more active(so cant download/sync again) but has huge amount of mails which are very important. I have a copy of these emails on a backup location. So i copied these two email folders from the backup location to current location and started TB. But it still does not work, and does not show the emails. What i noticed is that after copying the mail folder from backup location to current profile location, it shows the inbox file with large file size,,,,,, but after starting TB these large files seemingly gets overwritten by blank ones with no emails into it. I have 1 profile which has 7 emails configured into it. So I dont want any changes in other emails (apart from these 2). So i have not copied the entire Profile folder but only copied subfolders related to these 2 email accounts. Please help restoring the OLD mails. Best Regards, Tejas Mehta

All Replies (6)

Zenos
Zenos
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I am not sure this piecemeal copying of folders will work. A folder representing an account will only show if there is an entry for that account in prefs.js, and if it is not a current working account that's not likely to be the case.

I'd try using ImportExportTools to import them into custom subfolders under Local Folders.

https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

TejasMehta
TejasMehta Question owner
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Hi Zenos,

Thanks for your response.

1) Can we edit the prefs.js file. ? 2) Alternatively can i create a new profile and restore those ?

3) Any other way, how to selectively restore a specific mail account within the profile(not the entire profile).

TejasMehta
TejasMehta Question owner
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By the way, I created one more profile from the Profile manager and then copied the old profile database into this one. So all my emails were restored. But when i restarted the TB, the mails were missing, while i can only see the heading Inbox but no mails within it.

Can someone please help.

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 25 Contributor
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re:I created one more profile from the Profile manager What is the name of this profile?

Please post images of all the following: Show contents of 'profiles.ini' file Show contents of 'Profiles' folder Show contents of the 'profile name' folder you created.

If the restored mail account is a pop account...click on 'Mail' folder. Make sure the 'Size' column is visible. Post image showing contents of account.

TejasMehta
TejasMehta Question owner
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Hi Tod,

I have attached the screenshots of profiles and folders. Can you please review and help me restrore my old mails.

When i do search, i can see the subject headings of older mails but upon clicking the mails do not open or do not sow any contents as they may not be present. Strange.

Regards, Tejas

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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You got good advice from Zenos, but I do not think you used it. If you had this thread would have been closed some time ago.

Fundamentally you can not do what you are trying to to the way you are going about it. Zenos gave you details on how to go about importing the "backuo" files to "Local folders"