As I understand it, you lost your Gmail messages. Giving exact details may help. My fear is that you assumed the messages in the IMAP account would remain when you moved some to your PC and then did a delete. Here is what might have happened: - you moved messages to Local Storage to save them, and then did a delete. If you deleted any messages on PC that were moved from server, the server still 'owns' the messages. Since iMAP always syncs to the server, messages deleted on PC are immediately deleted from server. So, try to be clear in each step, as you may have inadvertently deleted from the server. If you have not compressed the trash folder, you may be able to recover them. Let me know.

I must trust that it's very hard for me to follow your answer... I not even knew what was IMAP, and now, internet docet, I have a "quasi" idea... I promised myself to better describe the problem, but aqnother dout I hope could now be removed... not only the directories I worked on, all... all gmail directories were emptied

click to 'account settings' and click the server settings pane for the account. My guess is that it will state that this is an IMAP account. These can be wonderful, or confusing. An IMAP account focuses on the server. Copies are downloaded to PC for viewing, but the actual message remains on the server. So, if the message is deleted from PC, it is also deleted from Server. The only way to save on PC and remove from server is to first, COPY (not move) to Local Folders, and then to delete from server. A Move causes the server to retain ownership. I hope this information is helpful. You are not the first to possibly misunderstand the server and PC relationship.

"You are not the first to possibly misunderstand the server and PC relationship.  ???

that's exactly me !!!

... I did all my create, move, remove ... only on Thunderbird instead of Gnail... do you agree? Many thanks for your help, I can just regret my stupidity. Ciao, Giorgio.

Moving in Thunderbird still is following IMAP protocol. If the move left ownership on the server, then deleting from the server deleted the messages. I regret your loss of the messages. If you have not compacted the local folders, you still may be able to reconstruct the lost messages. It's a tedious process, but doable. Check the size of the local folders that previously had the messages. With thunderbird not running, you can open a local folder (but NOT the msf file) with Notepad or other simple text editor. If you see your messages there, you can reactivate them by doing this: Locate the line before your email text that reads "X-Mozilla-Status: 0009" (or similar; the number may differ). Change the number to four zeros (″0000"). Repeat throughout the file for each message. Save the document and exit Notepad

And, you are not stupid, just unaware of how IMAP works. You seem quite intelligent to me. :)