Unfortunately, without concrete details about your initial problem such as a screen shot or the name of your mail provider, it is rather impossible to provide advice.

Concrete details: My initial problem was that, when I opened Thunderbird last night, I saw that it was or had upgraded itself to 102.2.2 and just wanted me to re-start to complete. Before I got to that point, though, I got ninety (90) notifications that certain folders could not be found and that I should make sure they were there then do something. HOWever, because the app was informing me that there were so many problems, I wrote down the name of each and every "lost" folder as the notification appeared, so that when I had finished the 90th notification, I was not entirely sure what I was supposed to do about it. Sorry that I did not stop to take a screenshot of the Notification, not only because you want to see it, but because I do not recall the action it instructed/suggested; but other than exact wording, I don't know what a screenshot would add to the understanding of the problem. If you tell me what you need to see, maybe I can conjure it up and screenshot it.

Today, first thing, I checked the copy of my profile folder and saw it had only 12 items while the complete one had 139 items; I think that might be because when I first thought it would copy, instead it simply moved the folder from one folder to another. so I copied files back into it from the backup. But since the backup was preserved only after the whole automatic upgrade and 90-screen notification, I suspected I might only be replicating the problem. So, as I respond here now, I have used Time Machine to get to a copy of the Profile folder from before the forced upgrade and it is copying now to the active folder. Then I'll compress copes of both the before and after Profile folder.

Once it is done, I will compare the size and contents of the Mail folder. The main reason for this step is that, after I finished recording the list of "missing" folders, two of my email accounts showed empty windows with a notice that the list of contents was missing, while my two main accounts, GMail and Hotmail (Microsoft Outlook) seemed to be recognized and populated. I suppose that was a result of whatever behind the scenes action the upgrade had taken, but that, too, is why I am first going to check the Time Machine's version to see if all accounts are shown in the Mail folder inside the profile folder.

I still do not understand how or why a profile that had had zero problems for months or even over a year would suddenly be unable to find folders it recognized the previous time I had Thunderbird open. 

Email accounts: I have five active email accounts. Hotmail and GMail are the main two, while AT&T (my new Cable provider since 2013), AOL and Comcast are the others, and those are the folders that showed as empty after the overwrite of the app — but, again, that is probably because I had tried to preserve the Profile folder before closing the app. Comcast is a leftover from before I switched to AT&T and is not important. since their name has become so deeply associated with indifferent service, I noticed earlier yesterday that they have changed their website name to Xfinity, so the previous direction to go to Comcast might be a problem now for Thunderbird, but it would have nothing to do with the other two secondary accounts problem(s).

Unchanged for years is the fact that AT&T U-verse is my internet provider, which might be what you meant by "mail provider."

Each of the 90 missing folder notification windows all began with "The folder <foldername>on Home (the name I gave to Thunderbird's set of folders) is missing. You should first check to see if the folder exists then <whatever>."

If I find all the mbox files in the Profile copied from pre-auto update, I might simply go through the process of setting up Thunderbird anew, letting it make new mbox files then check to see if they include what was in there before this unnecessary confusion was loosed on me.

I am now avidly interested to learn if there is another app that will simply take files from email provider servers and store them locally, with only — or the option for — simple use as an email app without trying to implement all kinds of additional bells and whistles that make this kind of problem more likely.

If there is any further information that you would like, simply let me know.

Good idea to restore a TM backup.

Screen shots are almost always helpful to both the user and the person helping, because memory is both short and inaccurate.

Thank you for cosigning my desire to have backups before updates are applied.

IF I had been warned/notified instead of the update being automatically applied, I would have made a backup, but I would not want to have to do that every single time before I open Thunderbird. A few iterations ago I began making backups before applying/allowing an update, but, again, this was done without any forewarning.

1. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions about the procedure that I outlined as my plan to get back to being able to pick up where I got pushed off?

2. Can you refer me to anything that provides clear, simple, effective steps to recover from such problems as this? I also would like to be able to go to some page that explains the assumptions built into the creation and management of mbox files. Because it was the 1980s when I started using personal computers, I have seen that today's generation of coders are much more likely to put out apps that have not really been thoroughly tested or to even provide the courtesy of giving users a warning instead of automatically applying an upgrade, let alone much information that would be useful in recovering following a mishap.

3. Finally, do you have any suggestions for an app that will accept emails moved from the provider's server without endangering the archived files but still be able to do rudimentary emailing?

I really do not have any objection to updates to apps per se, but I find any "stealth" automatic updates that make simple recovery impossible to be frustrating, which leads me to begin looking for a replacement (at which point I would end my monthly contribution to Thunderbird — no reason for me to pay for this kind of totally unnecessary hassle).

Hello whldorsey. I don't know how much help I can be but I'll give it a shot.

First off, auto updates. If they break your system, they suck. So, you said your current version is 102.2.2, which was auto-updated from version 102.2.1. You don't mention what operating system you are using but by the version number, I may assume you are using a version of Windows, either version 10 or 11. Though really, the version number is not important here. As I am using a flavour of linux, my version of Thunderbird is currently 91.11.0. Thankfully, when updates are available, linux will tell me of the available updates and then ask me if I want to install them. :)

But anyways, your point of auto updates did interest me and I did look for the setting on my version of Thunderbird and couldn't directly find anything about it. So when I dug deeper, I did find a setting in the config of "app.update.auto" set to true. I'm guessing if I set it to false, then it won't automatically update my version, although as I said, my system does not currently follow that behaviour. So whether or not you would have a similar option in your config area, I don't know. But you could look if you want. How I found mine was going through the menu option of "Edit" and then selecting "Preferences". While in Preferences under the "General" tab, I scrolled down to find the "Config Editor" option. I clicked on that and it opened up the Advanced Preferences in another tab and when using "update" as the search parameter, I found the option of "app.update.auto". So if you have an option like this available, maybe you can turn it to "false" and see what it does?

Now onto your other issues. You mentioned having 5 different E-Mail accounts, two of which are Gmail and Hotmail. Do you know how you access your e-mail accounts? By that I mean do you use POP3 access or IMAP access? As I personally use POP3 access, it basically allows me to download any and all e-mails received from my e-mail accounts and stores the messages on my computer. At least when you use POP3 accounts, there is also a "Local Folders" folder/directory that shows up in your folder window, which can contain any number of folders within it. This "Local Folders" folder/directory is literally that...a directory that would be stored on your hard drive somewhere and would contain a text file of each folder within it that you have listed in your "Local Folders" folder/directory.

With POP3 usage, any folders you have in your account, they would correlate to a physical text file on your computer that you can copy from one location to another to make a copy of, of you so wished. Now to get a little more thorough, using my account as an example, I have two "Inbox" files within one directory. One is just "Inbox" (which does NOT have an extension with it) which is the text file that contains all of my e-mails in my inbox, and the second is "Inbox.msf", which is like an index file. I would recommend that if you were to copy your folders to save them in another location, first compact them if you can (Menu option "File" and then "Compact Folders"), and then save them but delete the .msf files since when you load them up in another location, Thunderbird will reindex them again to the new version that you are using. If you are not sure about this piece of advice, you can save the .msf files but when copying back to Thunderbird, try the other files first and leave the .msf files out, at least for the first attempt. As I said, after reindexing, Thunderbird should repopulate the folders with correlating .msf files.

So as you said you had 90 folders missing, maybe do a search on your computer to see if you can find any of them somewhere on your hard drive. They just might be there but in a different location.

Now as you said your Gmail and Hotmail were getting full, if you use IMAP access for them, maybe if you have access to the "Local Folders", maybe you could create some new e-mail folders there and then copy any e-mails from either of those two accounts and basically transfer the e-mails from those accounts to your local hard drive and then remove the e-mails from those accounts, thus freeing up space in them.

So hopefully this information can help you in your issues that you are dealing with, but I might advise that since I am using a version of Thunderbird that is lower than yours and as you said, developers may have changed things slightly, I might recommend checking the files first before going all in, just to confirm that you won't lose anything in case they did indeed change things from my version to yours. Good luck.

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions. Here I'll try to respond to each in turn.

The reason I didn't mention my OS was because I perceived the problem as the upgrade is what broke, which to me spoke to coding. But my OS is 10.14.6 (Mojave) ona 2012 Mac Pro (desktop) w/32GB of RAM (I can not go to the more recent iterations on this machine; I have to wait for Apple to put out new versions of the Mac Pro, which finally is beginning to be mentioned). Previous Tbird upgrades informed me that they were ready and allowed me to be prepared to take that gamble. Previously, though, the only gamble had been moving from v. 91 to three digits, but I had kept an install app for 91 so ran that, backed up the Profile folder, then embarked on the three-digit, figured out what changes had to be made, but having back-ups of Tbird-made folders worked fine until auto-updating to 102.2.2.

The closest previous install version I had before was, I think 102.1, but I can not be certain, since the 102.2.2 upgrade changed the app in the Applications folder even before I quit to "complete" installation of 102.2.2. The most recent update package I have is 102.1.0 — which I take as meaning the next one, which would not have been 102.2.2, had been installed, probably automatically. (It takes so long to load that I usually open the app then go do something else for a while instead of just sitting here watching the gear/wheel turn.)

Next time I open it I will look for a config of "app.update.auto" set to "true" to see if I can change it to "false," but I've got a step or two I want to complete before I open it again. Before I tell that, I just want to note that if my config now says that, it is because Thunderbird's builders made it set to that, not me. That also means it is something they wrote as changed/to change without ever letting me know, another indication that they were already taking safeguards away surreptitiously. Right now I am afraid that I could not prevent re-corruption of whatever file before again having to account for 90 folders.

Whatever Tbird reads for auto config is not found in searching the contents of ANYthing in the Mozilla Preferences folder. (I am confused by Thunderbird's proclamation that it is separate from Mozilla but support and Preferences folder are still Mozilla.)

Another step I have taken before opening Tbird again is that I used Time Machine to recover the Profile folder from before the forced upgrade. Using Microsoft Word, I learned that an enclosed file had information missing that seemed to explain why the forced upgrade could not find those 90 folders where certain emails were to be moved. That corruption might actually be the only problem, but, by me not being a programmer, I have taken and will be taking these other measures that I can think of to back-stop my next attempt to again have an operable version of Tbird: recovered the pre auto upgrade Profile, ZIPped it, replaced the apparently incomplete sorting directions in the new folder with the previous complete version, then ZIPped that one, too, as backup as well as ZIPping the unaltered problematic folder. So the new one is preserved in both unaltered and altered states, with the uncorrupted file ready to be read.

Meanwhile, though, since this happened at the perfect Murphy's Law point, I have had to stop to wade through emails to make more space on GMail's and Hotmail(Outlook)'s servers, since I can not be sure that they would capable of being moved smoothly from theirs to my local Thunderbird folder until I get this problem solved. And I can't get this problem solved until apparently I have to figure it out. I mean, most people still use Windows with others using Linux, and only rarely do I see questions tied to OS X when I look through Mozilla support pages, and the people who created the situation at Mozilla either do not make it easy to contact them or do not reply to much of anything; I can understand that, but it's pretty much a Catch-22, as it were, when they both jack users up AND refer them among only one another. (Hmmmm. Maybe I need to go specifically to an Apple/Mac support group.)

Regarding the POP vs. IMAP, quite some time ago I dealt with that, with the answer being to leave the provider's in the then-new IMAP format, because I do want to be able to conduct business through them, not from Thunderbird, and POP, which meant that everything would be moved to thus limited to Thunderbird's capabilities, which were and still are not up to handling everything appropriately (i.e., some elements simply do not show because of the encoding or whatever that Google or Microsoft or others use in their app).

Wait, I'm remembering better. Let me be clearer. I got the impression that POP3 would cause that irreversible movement, but when the provider began using IMAP, Tbird would not, could not, "find" the emails unless I instructed it to also "be" IMAP. The understanding you gave about POP3 was exactly what I wanted, but apparently IMAP servers can not be accessed with POP set as protocol; at least not as Tbird is/was currently coded.

I spot-checked the list of 90 folders in 102.2.2 and the ones I looked for were there and had contents listed when opened, so it is probably, again, corruption of that file("blocklist"?) that Tbird uses to know what's where, corruption that took place between the pre 102.2.2 and upgrade. (To be honest, given the scare when I made the first update to a three digit version, I would have happily stuck with v. 91.x, but the app builders made that impossible.)

What I did was duplicate a large file from the pre and post Profile folders, ran them through a Compare Files in Microsoft Word, and saw that almost all or all of the missing folders were under a designation that I originally called "Home" as the identifier for the list of folders that reside on my computer. Apparently it was that the upgrade removed that "Home" designation and therefore the moves could not proceed. I have no idea why going to 102.2.2 would remove that directory(?) designation.

When I looked through all accounts in the new "improved" 102.2.2, two less used accounts were blank (not empty, but showed no listings), but I took that as more data that had been corrupted or otherwise removed from that file I checked when the upgrade was forced into place. That's something else I'll look for when I open the new version a second time.

If I understand your idea about using "Local folders," it means I will also have to be back in 102.2.2, so that'll have to wait, but I like the idea.

What I really need to be doing is completing an addition to a chapter for a book that is just a short time away from being ready to go to press, so I might have to try the Local Folders option and get back to orderly draw-down in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, I am really going to try to figure out a less problematic way to hold onto necessary emails, so I may wind up leaving Thunderbird alone and ending my monthly donation.

Again, thanks for your time and thoughts.

Hello again whldorsey. Well, I'll be a pain and respond again. :)

So, before I begin my response, let me ask you what version of Thunderbird would you like to use/have? You can go to the website of https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/ and be able to download any version of Thunderbird that you would like. There should be a related mac version available if you look at the version number that you want. Additionally, you can go to the website of https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ for versions of Firefox, if you so wish.

Now the more fun part. :) Here are 3 websites to look at: https://blog.gnu-designs.com/deploying-firefox-and-thunderbird-policies-to-prevent-auto-updates-and-tune-other-features/; https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64980412/how-to-disable-thunderbird-auto-update; https://superuser.com/questions/1692808/how-to-disable-automatic-thunderbird-updates.

Basically the above websites will tell you how to use policies to limit actions, like how to disable Thunderbird (and Firefox if you wish) from automatically updating without your consent. :) They require the use of a file called policies.json and it is required to be put in a specific place. The file itself is just a simple text file but the three links tell you what to include and where to put it to make it work properly. So, the question still remains...what version of Thunderbird do you want to use/have?

I will add that when you do decide to do this and reinstall your preferred version, I would recommend that you disconnect your device from your network or Internet (potentially disable your wireless connection on your device or your network card) so that when you do install it, you can then place the policies.json file in the appropriate place and then open the application. Once that is done, then you can reconnect to your network or Internet. I did have an issue with a newer version of Firefox (version 102+) acting up, so when I uninstalled it and tried to install a lower version (96.0.3), when I opened up the browser, it was automatically downloading the newer version again without any input from me. So, I learned and tried it again by disconnecting myself from the network and the Internet, and then installing the program and setting up the policies.json file, before reconnecting myself. It was a pain but it worked and I did learn from it. :) So this is why I am bestowing this advice to you, just in case.

So now, back to your last message.

You mention time as in it takes a long time to open up your Thunderbird app. You also mention 90 folders. You also mention Gmail and Hotmail. I checked and Gmail comes with a whole lot of storage space...upto 15 gigs spread out among Google accounts. How big is your Gmail account space taking up? I guess as you have 5 accounts, and if they are all IMAP accounts, that could be a reason why it is taking Thunderbird so long to open...in that Thunderbird has to sync all of those accounts and folders which take up a rather large amount of space.

Now another question is that with those 90 folders that were having problems, were they part of an e-mail that was set up as a POP3 account or an IMAP account? If they were part of an IMAP account and you still have that account active and are able to send and receive e-mail to and from that account, then those e-mails should still be on the mail servers for that account. If you had a secondary device to check this or maybe a web based environment to log into to check, this might be something worth checking. If that is the case that they are IMAP accounts which you still have access to and the respective folders are still on the servers, you should be able to remove the account from Thunderbird and recreate it and have it just load up again. But make sure you do NOT select an option to delete the messages from the server, for IMAP settings. Or at least I believe you should be able to just remove it from Thunderbird and then recreate it without issue. :) Depending on who the mail provider is, maybe asking them first might be useful. I don't want to give you bad advice on this one, especially if it can lead to you losing lots and lots of e-mails.

Though, if it is an IMAP account and you no longer have access to the server, then whatever you had on your hard drive is likely your only copy. Basically IMAP accounts are active and available until they are no longer active and available, after which they are deleted, unless you downloaded and saved any messages to a personal device for safe keeping. A good example would be a Gmail account. You can use it for as long as you have it but once you delete the account, like the e-mail, you no longer have access to it unless you saved any messages to a device you have access to. And by saving it to a device, I mean in a folder that was not part of the IMAP profile but to a folder that would be considered "local".

So again with a POP3 account, you basically download your e-mail messages to a device and work from that device to do your e-mails and e-mail responses. Although, this does not stop you from using web based environments to check for new messages or send messages through the web based environment, BEFORE you download the messages to your device. Suggestions on the protocols (POP3 and IMAP) are that if you are basically using 1 device to do e-mails from, POP3 is likely suggested. If you are using multiple devices to do e-mails, IMAP would likely be suggested as the message storage would be on the mail server for the IMAP protocol and with POP3, the messages would be stored on your chosen device. So as you are likely finding out, depending on the storage capacity of your mail server or your chosen device, you can choose accordingly. Although, as services like Gmail offer web based access, I would think that using the web based access would be somewhat the same or similar to the IMAP protocol in this case.

And just to restate something about POP3 and IMAP, since you talked about IMAP servers and such, you are getting your e-mail messages from the mail server of your provider. They likely offer POP3 servers and/or IMAP servers to be able to download those e-mail messages. Those servers sometimes may have different names and port numbers but they are likely associated to the same mail server. POP3 and IMAP are just protocols I would say, but do behave differently. Also, if you do select POP3, you may want to select the "delete mail after downloading" option in the settings/preferences for that account, or else you will have downloaded the e-mail messages but they would stay on the server for you to download again, until you delete them from there. ;)

And although I have no experience with IMAP, when you create an account with Thunderbird, I guess it could either be POP3 or IMAP. If you had an IMAP account and wanted to change it to a POP3 account, I don't know if that would work properly but the best method would likely be to create a new account that would be POP3 and then just download all of the e-mail messages to that account. Although in your situation, if you were using an IMAP currently, the best way would likely be to just create the respective folders that you want on your hard drive in the "Local Folders" section, or something locally like that that was separate from the IMAP account, and just copy the related e-mail messages over and then delete the related e-mails from the IMAP account. You would then have those messages stored locally but then too, depending on how much space they took up, you could add them back to your IMAP profile at a future time, if you needed to use them again I guess.

Now getting back to your point about MacOS and not many support queries for Thunderbird or Firefox on MacOS...if you have a question on Thunderbird or Firefox or anything Mozilla related, the product may different slightly from OS to OS, but the heart and core of the program should be the same no matter which OS it uses. So as you are using MacOS and my experience with Thunderbird comes from Windows XP and Linux, I can understand Thunderbird enough to try to help you, even if you are using an OS that I myself have never used as it isn't the OS that is the issue but the application, that being Thunderbird in this case. So as long as your issue is something that can be relate beyond the OS, then you can still be helped. Make sense?

Ok. So I think I covered everything I want to cover. And as you have a chapter to write it seems, good luck in finishing that. Although too, think of it this way...As you are having a issue with Thunderbird now, you could easily be having an issue with any other e-mail client you may use. Just right now, the problem does appear to be Thunderbird and the issue you were having with an update. At least with local folders and files, they are basically just text files saved on your computer that you can load up in any text editor to read, if you wanted to. Although they are saved in a format to be read by Thunderbird. Other e-mail programs may use a different format to store e-mail messages and folders in which can make it harder to read, if need be. But you should be able to "export" folders or such to transfer them to other e-mail clients, if you were so inclined.

Either way, I hope your issue will be resolved soon enough and with as little pain as possible. Good luck.

There's also a thing on the right side of the page that says, "Automatic update to 102.2.2 causes loss of everything" that goes here...https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1389326. Might this be helpful too for some of those issues you have/had?