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Imported data vanished

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by christ1

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The following happened as I upgraded an XP machine to Win7 on a new freshly-formatted SSD:

1. Before upgrading XP, installed Thunderbird and imported all data from OE. Verified all data was in Tbird. 2. Installed new SSD, set it as first boot hard drive (after optical drives) in CMOS, booted to Win7 DvD and installed on new SSD. At no time did any of this "touch" the former boot drive, now a secondary HDD with TBird on it, containing all of my emails, folders and contacts. 3. Changed properties of Desktop Tbird shortcut to point to the correct drive, now the D: drive, and launched Tbird 4. Spent the next 4 hours trying to figure out why Tbird knew nothing about the data it had imported less than an hour earlier. It started fresh, as though it had never been launched before, except that it did not show the Import wizard, and all attempts to import from OE resulted in Tbird's inability to find OE on the machine- no import. 5. Ran Recuva (deleted files scan/recovery utility) to scan for deleted email files and found two- one for OE and one very small one for Tbird. They were both Zip files, both created when I imported OE data into Tbird, and then both deleted at the time I installed Win7, even though they were on a completely different drive than the one Windows is now installed on..

After reading almost every article in the Mozilla migration/data-import FAQs, most of which reference long-out-of-date versions of Tbird, I was not able to find a way to suck the contents of the OE Emails/Folders Zipfile, or its extracted equivalent, into Tbird. Please advise how I can manually cram this information into Tbird since it seems to have destroyed the info I imported into it earlier. Thanks.

The following happened as I upgraded an XP machine to Win7 on a new freshly-formatted SSD: 1. Before upgrading XP, installed Thunderbird and imported all data from OE. Verified all data was in Tbird. 2. Installed new SSD, set it as first boot hard drive (after optical drives) in CMOS, booted to Win7 DvD and installed on new SSD. At no time did any of this "touch" the former boot drive, now a secondary HDD with TBird on it, containing all of my emails, folders and contacts. 3. Changed properties of Desktop Tbird shortcut to point to the correct drive, now the D: drive, and launched Tbird 4. Spent the next 4 hours trying to figure out why Tbird knew nothing about the data it had imported less than an hour earlier. It started fresh, as though it had never been launched before, except that it did not show the Import wizard, and all attempts to import from OE resulted in Tbird's inability to find OE on the machine- no import. 5. Ran Recuva (deleted files scan/recovery utility) to scan for deleted email files and found two- one for OE and one very small one for Tbird. They were both Zip files, both created when I imported OE data into Tbird, and then both deleted at the time I installed Win7, even though they were on a completely different drive than the one Windows is now installed on.. After reading almost every article in the Mozilla migration/data-import FAQs, most of which reference long-out-of-date versions of Tbird, I was not able to find a way to suck the contents of the OE Emails/Folders Zipfile, or its extracted equivalent, into Tbird. Please advise how I can manually cram this information into Tbird since it seems to have destroyed the info I imported into it earlier. Thanks.

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Thanks but that is not at all helpful. Please actually read my problem statement- there is no "Profile" for it to find- just a previously-deleted zip file (how it was created and/or deleted is still a mystery) apparently containing my email folders and emails from Outlook Express.

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1. Before upgrading XP, installed Thunderbird and imported all data from OE. Verified all data was in Tbird.

Since you said you verified it, I think it's fair to assume that there actually is a profile.

5. Ran Recuva (deleted files scan/recovery utility) to scan for deleted email files and found two- one for OE and one very small one for Tbird.

I don't think I can follow what you were trying to achieve here.

Thanks but that is not at all helpful.

Too bad. Good luck then.