Hey, thanks very much Rick. I hadn't given up but was certainly stymied and I really appreciate you following up. Once upon a time I could figure out how to problem solve my way through this stuff. Back in the beginning when you'd stay up all night turning off and on half of your extensions and control panels in hopes of finding the sole conflict freezing your Mac Plus. My son and I also built two hackintoshes that served us for a long time when he was 15 so this isn't completely foreign to me. I appreciate the specifics and I'll go back through the many profiles I created and see if I can isolate the mail messages post 2013. From 2007-2012, it's recovered and almost as I originally set it up. I at least have a direction to work in and I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks again, Jack M.

Remember that messages are stored in one file without an extension where there is a pair of files with the same name and the other file has an .msf extension.

I have given you no details for how to do anything. Please ask when you have questions.

Yeah that's what I'm starting with. I remember. I've gathered all these profiles together, and I'm going to go through all of them to search for exactly that, the .msf file paired with the non-msf file. I had a few on the new mini that I just copied and brought back. I'm looking through the Imap folders and Mail folders (including Local folders) for larger entries on the non-msf files. I will post again as I get through these and highlight them on my drive this afternoon. Thank you again, Jack M.

Even if I throw in the towel for conducting the entire profile restore I'll still be around to answer questions and to give hints.

Hello Rick, That took awhile. I came up with 2 profiles that I think are the best candidates for rescuing emails. I went through and tagged all the paired non-msf files with a dot after their name. They are not huge but there are many. I only copied a sampling of them (3 pages) to give you a sense of what the profile looks like. That file in its entirety is 12.77G. The last page is the profile it was paired with which is the identical name but is only 2.25G but only has the mail from 2012 and earlier. Again, those old files are pretty much intact on the new mini-mac even though the first attempt at installing TB failed. By the way I also bought a copy of Wondershare's Recoverit program this morning thinking that may be of some help in gathering up these files. I haven't used it before. Again thank you very much. I'm only able to get one jpg on this so I'll post another page. Jack M.

Rick the remaining images:

Hello Rick, That took awhile. I came up with 2 profiles that I think are the best candidates for rescuing emails. I went through and tagged all the paired non-msf files with a dot after their name. They are not huge but there are many. I only copied a sampling of them (3 pages) to give you a sense of what the profile looks like. That file in its entirety is 12.77G. The last page is the profile it was paired with which is the identical name but is only 2.25G but only has the mail from 2012 and earlier. Again, those old files are pretty much intact on the new mini-mac even though the first attempt at installing TB failed. By the way I also bought a copy of Wondershare's Recoverit program this morning thinking that may be of some help in gathering up these files. I haven't used it before. Again thank you very much. I'm only able to get one jpg on this so I'll post another page. Jack M.

The overall file size may not be significant. I don't know how much space the mozmsgs or other things take up. You also have a folder for gmail allmail, which duplicates messages in other folders (I believe -- I do not use gmail). But you are right that there seem to be many folders with messages.

I am not familiar with Recoverit. I'm usually wary of such apps. I assume that Recoverit is designed to help recover deleted and damaged files. I don't know how useful it may be for you. Deleted files can often be recovered for some time as long as other files have not written over the space on the drive.

Now, does the target profile on your new computer exist?

Even if I throw in the towel for conducting the entire profile restore I'll still be around to answer questions and to give hints.

Please do. I would rather work together on data recovery.

Jack, have you started using Time Machine for back-ups yet?

You'll want to back up everything before we proceed. Or did you already?

May I give a hint? Those mozmsgs folders are polluting the whole "Restoration profile" folder. I propose to start cleaning up the profile by deleting all this mozmsgs crap. After that it would be easier to navigate in the profile folder and concentrate on the essential mbox (message) files. Not to forget .sbd folders which may contain other message files (representing the sub-folders of the parent folder).

May I give a hint? Those mozmsgs folders are polluting the whole "Restoration profile" folder. I propose to start cleaning up the profile by deleting all this mozmsgs crap. After that it would be easier to navigate in the profile folder and concentrate on the essential mbox (message) files. Not to forget .sbd folders which may contain other message files (representing the sub-folders of the parent folder).

Please, give more than hints!

It's a good point. I was not thinking about the folder structure.

Re-create the folder structure in the new profile or copy it with the mbox files to the new profile?

Hello Rick, Sorry for the delay. I started transferring the files about 90 minutes ago and the copying stalled because of this stupid DS_store duplication and it closed down the profile (I thought I had lost it. Maddening). I have both the 12G qqg8c078 Restoration Profile and the 2.25G Restoration Profile (with the same name transferred to the new mac).

Hello Rick and Mapenzi, That took a lot longer than I expected. If there's a code or macro that can do that in a matter of seconds I don't want to know that it exists. I mentioned earlier having to solve crashes on the early Mac's by spending the night splitting your control panels and extensions in half and restarting until you came up with the culprit that you had added. In the 2nd half of the 80's somebody came out with a program called "Conflict Catcher" that would do that process for you automatically as long as it took. At the time, we thought it was the greatest thing ever invented. Anyhow, I've attached 3 pages from different parts of the profile to give you an idea of how it looks. Mapenzi, you were certainly right, it looks a lot cleaner now and much more representative of the actual Mail folder layouts. Thanks once more, Jack M.

Good work, Jack!

Have you drilled down through all the folders and identified the files with messages? Some of the folders in the screenpics are not expanded.

Good work, Jack! The profile folder contents are much clearer now but it still is a very long and probably deep folder hierarchy. And since it is so long and cannot be displayed in one picture I have difficulties to distinguish the different levels of the hierarchy. Am I right that all folders and files following after Local Folders in all images are really located in Local Folders? This would signify a great progress. Now begins a very tedious detective work: your Local Folders contain many *.sbd folders. These folders in the profile contain mail files and often other .sbd folders and correspond to a folder with sub-folders in Thunderbird. They have to be accompanied by mail (mbox) files of the same name without file extension, otherwise TB wouldn't display them in the folder pane. To take an exemple: in the second image I see a Utilities Paid.sbd folder which is accompanied by a Utilities Paid mailbox file, so this is OK. We won't need the Utilities Paid.msf file since it is an index file which doesn't contain messages.

Yet in your first (left) image I see an Inbox.sbd folder as a sub-folder of /Mail/Local Folders/ and I am unable to see the corresponding Inbox mbox file. This means that in the folder pane neither the Inbox folder nor any of its sub-folders and messages would be displayed. To make up for this situation of an orphaned .sbd folder you need to create a new empty text file file: open TextEdit, save the empty file under the name of the orphaned .sbd folder and delete the .txt suffix your system will automatically add. So in our exemple of the Inbox.sbd folder you will have to name the file Inbox and move it in the same hierarchic level as Inbox.sbd It will be a very laborious task to verify all .sbd folders whether they are accompanied by their mbox file with the same name. That's why I threw the towel since I cannot do this myself: it would need to ask for dozens of new screen shots to verify and this would take many days or even weeks...

Mapenzi, I understand the rationale behind your approach better now. I was assuming a slightly different approach. I wonder if it is worth considering.

Since getting the folder hierarchies in perfect shape will require much work, could Jack instead? --

1. Create a simple folder hierarchy in his new profile.
2. Copy all the mbox files from everywhere in his old hierarchies to the new hierarchy in his new profile.
3. Over time, revise the new hierarchy to be more complex, if desired, by working only within Thunderbird instead of in the file system.

Then you (or I) would not have to oversee all the preparation of the old folder hierarchies.

What do you think?

Rick, yes I wanted to preserve the actual folder hierarchy in Local Folders as far as possible. Yours is a more radical method consisting in the abandon of the actual hierarchy by keeping only the mbox files. On the other side this would leave the charge for Jack to re-create an entire new hierarchy with many folders, then populating it by moving folders around. At the same time it would be an occasion to delete old stuff he doesn't need any more. Creating new folders in Local Folders in the new profile also will be time-consuming. In my practice creating a new folder in Thunderbird takes as much time as creating an empty text file with Apple's text editor.

If I had one look on the entire actual hierarchy as a whole (and not in three or four pictures) it would be easier to give an advice. I need the big picture, that's why in a case like this one I prefer remote control. I think that Jack should decide which method would/could be the easiest way to accomplish this herculean work ...

Good day Rick and Mapenzi, My thanks for your continuing support! Rick, I did open all the files and scanned them (several times because I'd miss one or two). Afterwards I condensed some of the files just so I could give you a better sense of the span of the profile. I didn't know whether to also trash files within the Inboxes that were empty, but I held off because I thought they may have had some purpose and simply been misplaced. Mapenzi, that leads me to your point about the monumental task on your end of having to help reorganize a botched collection of 20 years of emails and given a microcosm sampling of the task at each step. I do realize what a preposterous thing I've laid out. But I'm also rather tenacious and will do what's necessary on my end to recover some semblance of history. If it's feasible to assign me the task then I will get it done. If it becomes a burden for either of you on your time commitments, I would absolutely understand without question. This is the first time I've ever posted a question like this and it's quite possible it's way out of bounds. That being said, I welcome any further direction. Continually grateful, Jack

Understood. Thanks for your explanation. I do not know which approach I would take myself.

Understood. Thanks for your explanation. I do not know which approach I would take myself.