Why can't thunderbird find my email accounts
I open up Thunderbird and it asks me if I want to create an account. I have two existing accounts that access my mail on Time Warner Cable's Webmail. One is PAWilkey and the other is Tx7Phyl. I had 100's of emails in these two accounts. Thunderbird seems to have lost both of them. I am sure that the emails are still on my harddrive but Thunderbird can't seem to find them. Also, Thunderbird only shows the Write Chat Address Book tabs on the bar. All the other items are greyed out. Anybody have any idea how I can get access to my accounts and emails again? I am currently on 31.1.0 of Thunderbird. I had been on 17.0.5 when I first saw the problem. I allowed Thunderbird to update itself in the hopes that it would be able to locate my accounts. No luck there.
All Replies (4)
I am sorry to hear about this. Here is what I would suggest you do in the interest of getting access to your email back rapidly.
I'd suggest making a backup of your profile, then trying to revert to a previous Thunderbird version.
In Windows Thunderbird updates are automatic by default. To avoid similar situations in the future, you could change that and decide to have a more conservative approach to upgrades.
You can uninstall the current Thunderbird version via Control Panel > Programs and Features and reinstall a previous version, download it from here:
Click on the type for your OS. eg: If using Windows select 'win32' then select the language eg: en-GB = English british then download the .exe file
You can customize automatic updates behavior, however, it's under Tools > Options > Advanced > Update.
My suggestion would be to set it to Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them., specially if you depend on email for critical / important business or personal matters.
I essentially did what you said except that I found the version that was in use when the problem occurred, namely, v17.0.6. The computer with the problem had that version locked in but somehow it got changed and went to the update version.
Anyway, I was able to get the two email accounts back but the install of Thunderbird v 17.0.6 still can't locate the Thunderbird database files for Inbox, Sent, Trash or any of the folders. I located those files on the computer in question. Is there any way to make Thunderbird v 17.0.6 see those files and incorporate them into the new installation?
I have a MiTec MailViewer application that I can use to read the email in those files but I want to access them through Thunderbird once again. I would appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks.
Can you share the exact location of the files you found? It seems odd they are not in their intended location.
Thunderbird Database Files
Old Installation: Thunderbird cannot see the files depicted below. They are related to pawilkey@gt.rr.com and tx7phyl@gt.rr.com respectively. These files are the ones that Thunderbird lost for some reason.
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\vh1k2s0r.default\Mail\pop-server.gt.rr.com C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\vh1k2s0r.default\Mail\pop-server.gt.rr-1.com
New Installation: Thunderbird can see the files depicted below. They are related to pawilkey@gt.rr.com and tx7phyl@gt.rr.com respectively. These files are from the latest installation of Thunderbird 17.0.6.
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\vh1k2s0r.default\Mail\pop-server.gt.rr-2.com C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\vh1k2s0r.default\Mail\pop-server.gt.rr-3.com