Help! Can't Get Accounts or Emails Into New Thunderbird Installation After Win 11 Reset And Profile File Deletions
System:
Win 11 Home (lastest updates, also my notebook's latest updates from the manufacturer) Thunderbird version 151.0
Okay, this is a multiple clusterf#@$.
I ended up needing to do a Win 11 Home "reset" keeping data. But I needed to back up some files first. But my back up drive was full. Usually, it's because of EaseUs ToDo not deleting files and just adding and adding to the system backup. But that wasn't the main issue: my Thunderbird profile (which I backup separately) was about 280 GIGABYTES in size! This is an extension of a prior problem for which nobody on here new how to solve and certainly nobody from Mozilla chimed in to help. So I did what I'd done before (but it'd never been like this) and delected a couple of THOUSAND seemingly redundant iterations of files from my profile, but NONE of the folders inside the profile.
Of course the Win11 reset deleted Thunderbird and all the profile information. No big problem, I've done this before...but it didn't work copying in all of the old files (from my backup drive) into a new profile and selecting that profile to boot. So, I went to the "Recycle Bin", undeleted all of those files back into my backed-up profile. But I'm only able to get Thunderbird to see all of my address book information. It is not finding my Thunderbird and email account settings nor my email messages (21 years worth). I 100% did NOT delete my email messages (c:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\PROFILENAME\Mail).
I can laboriously redo my email account information (five different accounts) and Thunderbird user settings, but I really DESPERATELY NEED HELP restoring my email messages.
PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!
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Never mind. The data is gone and not recoverable. At least the one folder titled "!!!NEVER DELETE!!!" did survive. It has information on where my ancestors came from and those who were murdered in the Holocaust, and maybe the last photo of my mother where she was still able to smile as Alzheimer's slowly destroyed her.
I'm just so sad. I had 21 years of email archives. Not the advertisements and junk like that, but my communications with friends and loved ones. It was MY history!
I'm just kind of devastated right now.
As I understand it, you had a backup of the profile, but when restoring, it would not work. Knowing the problem at the time, may have been useful. But that's history now. You deleted thousands of files related to thunderbird, but did not explain from where. That also may have been useful. So, you have a profile now with the restored addressbook, but not the messages. Here is my suggestion:
- set up the POP accounts, but keep offline. That is, do not allow accounts to retrieve mail.
- now, exit thunterbird and copy the backup of the profile\Mail folder to overlay whatever is there. The intent here is to keep the same popstate.dat intact so that, when you next retrieve mail, you will pick up from where you left off. On a restart, that should work. BUT, since we don't know why the original restore didn't work, I can't be sure.
If those suggested steps seem inappropriate, then more information is needed. Posting a screenshot of the Mail folder may prove helpful. Thank you.
NOTE: Have you considered using multiple profiles to allow use of multiple drives to minimize loss or backup/restore exposure? Not knowing your details, 280 gig is a lot of gig. :)
Huh.
Yeah, as I already stated: the messages are irretrievable, full stop. Only about 1% were recovered. The rest don't exist. So, that's the end of it.