Kindly explain "disappears".

The emails are not in the inbox anymore. How can I find them?

Are you talking about a pop or imap mail account? What OS are you using eg: Windows 10? What server are you using eg: gmail ?

Windows 10 and bigpond.com. I think it is imap, but I’m not very familiar with terms. I am 80 yrs young. Any help will be appreciated. I have tried to uninstall and reinstall but data is still same.

In most cases, it is rarely the problem with the Thunderbird program itself and so uninstalling and reinstalling the program will usually not make any difference.

IMAP mail accounts only show what is on the server because imap folders synchronise with server folders. In effect, they are one and the same.

Possible reason: It is possible you accidentally archived the emails. If you selected an email to view and then pressed the 'A' key, this is a shortcut key to auto archive the selected email and will auto archive the email into where ever you have set it up to archive those emails. Usually, this is the 'Archives' folder. You may need to subscribe to see that folder.

How to subscribe to see a server folder:

• Right click on the imap mail account name in the Folder Pane and select 'Subscribe'
• Select the folder and click on 'Subscribe', then click on 'OK'

How to find out what folder is set up to contain archived emails.

• Right click on the imap mail account name in the Folder Pane and select 'Settings'

This opens the 'Account settings' window.

• Select 'Copies & Folders'

There will be a 'Message Archives' section stating the name of the folder and the account.

Another possible reason: POP mail accounts can only access and download from the server Inbox. By default, the server will delete the copy on the server after the email has been downloaded to a pop account. There are settings within a pop account to force a copy to be left on the server. However, there are also settings to delete copies off server when deleted from pop account. So....... If you are also running a POP mail account to same email address from any device ( Thunderbird, another computer, phone etc) and it downloads the email, it could be deleting the copy off the server. Then when the Thunderbird imap account synchronises with server (after the pop account), the email in imap account will disappear because it does not exist on the server.

The emails might be in the 'Trash' folder assuming it has not been emptied.

Have you ever used Outlook email client with a Pop account. If yes, is it still working in the background accessing server and downloading emails. I have come across someone who experienced this before. They were not aware that Outlook was still working.

Do you use a phone to access emails? Maybe it is also set up as POP. If it is set up as Imap and you deleted some emails, then they are deleted off server and so will get deleted from any IMAP account.

Did you access the webmail account via a browser and delete emails? If yes, then you deleted them off the server and therefore will also disappear from any IMAP account.

Thankyou for all your help. I will go through all your suggestions. Can you tell me how I would know if I am running thunderbird in safe mode? I seem to recall trying that at some stage. Thanks again.

If you use any addons including Lightning (Calendar) or alternative themes or customised thunderbird via a 'userChrome.css or 'userContent.css file then they would be disabled in 'Safe Mode'. If you had altered position of any default buttons or added additional buttons to toolbars, then they would also be reset to default and not be as you had set up whilst in 'Safe Mode'.

Thunderbird will only run in 'safe mode' if you deliberately choose it upon starting up (You would need to hold down the shift keyboard key whilst clicking on Thunderbird icon) or whilst Thunderbird was running and restarting in Safe Mode (by selecting 'Help' > 'Troubleshooting Information' and clicking on 'Restart with Addons disabled' button and then selecting the 'Continue in safe mode' button from the small pop up window ). More info here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

A normal start of Thunderbird will always open as standard.

This is such a pain. Sorry for being a nuisance. I still find that the email will delete itself after a couple of minutes. I cannot find where it goes. I have opened every folder. I might have to take pc to an expert to sort it out.

dotmurp said

This is such a pain. Sorry for being a nuisance. I still find that the email will delete itself after a couple of minutes. I cannot find where it goes. I have opened every folder. I might have to take pc to an expert to sort it out.

Do you get your mail on a phone or another device? A fairly common misunderstanding occurs because Thunderbird creates IMAP accounts by default, these synchronize mail with the mail server.

Many mobile devices have fairly restrictive data allowances, so POP mail is popular there. A common default with POP is to remove mail from the server when it is downloaded/retrieved. The result is mail appears to disappear from Thunderbird when it is actually deleted on the server by the other device retrieving it.

I do get email on my ipad. Would this be the cause? Any suggestions as to how to fix it? Thanks

Just noticed that it is a pop account (bigpond) on my ipad. Am I able to change this?

dotmurp said

Just noticed that it is a pop account (bigpond) on my ipad. Am I able to change this?

Try and experiment first. turn off the ipad and see what happens with mail in Thunderbird. If it stays around you have you answer.

I would assume somewhere in the account settings on the ipad you will find an option to NOT delete the mail from the server. But it might not be present, it really depends on how sophisticated the mail client on the iPad is.

You may be best removing the POP account from the iPad and adding it again as IMAP. Just be aware that data usage will rise in that case. But nly look at going that way if you can not change the retention settings for the POP account.

I had been using Incredimail for years and they informed me the other day that they are closing down. That is why I am panicking to find an alternative. I was told that Thunderbird is good. I just stopped receiving emails on Incredimail to see if that will make a difference before I worked on ipad. So far, so good. The emails (2 that you sent) are still there. Fingers crossed.

Seems to be working fine now that I have stopped receiving emails through Incredimail. Thanks for all your help

Dot

I had not heard that about Incredimail. Personally I have had a love hate relationship with that product for probably 20 years. I liked the pretty, but 20 years ago on a dial-up internet connection I really objected the huge emails the pretty generated. This was exacerbated by those replying usually copying the original. But it is sad to see the market shrinking, because a vibrant competitive market is actually good for the medium as a whole.

I really do not want to see a day when there is Thunderbird and one other in the market place as we have really come to in web browsers in recent months, with Firefox and chrome being the entirety of the market with other brands using the engine of one or the other.

re :I do get email on my ipad. Would this be the cause? Just noticed that it is a pop account (bigpond) on my ipad.

As I said: If you are also running a POP mail account to same email address from any device ( Thunderbird, another computer, phone etc) and it downloads the email, it could be deleting the copy off the server.

Matts advice is good. The pop account on ipad may have Account settings that allow you to choose a setting 'Leave copy on server', alternatively create an imap account on ipad to same email address. As the Pop account may have emails that you want back on server, you could 'Forward' those emails to yourself or after creating the imap account to same email address, copy the emails from the pop account Inbox into the imap account Inbox.

Once you can see those emails again on the computer in Thunderbird imap account, then remove the pop account from ipad.

Thankyou

I found the solution that worked for me. I have version 68.7.0 running on Linux Mint 19.3. I had gone through nearly all the preferences and account settings and found nothing. I had virtually disabled any extension or add-on. No luck. However, starting in safe mode, everything was there. It had to something else --something that didn't show as an error either in the system, or in the TBird debugger. It was as simple as this:

from the menu bar: View->Messages->All

Somehow, and I have no idea how, my Tbird had been set to show only Unread messages. I didn't even know that setting was present, or why.