pop vs imap has no bearing.

Only the Inbox is missing?

What exactly do you mean by " just downloaded thousands of email"? Were they not downloaded before?

Wayne, Thanks for clarifying that IMAP / POP is not an issue here.

I have not been using Thunderbird for a while. I used CenturyLink's web mail for quite a while. But then I decided to start using Thunderbird again, so I started it up and downloaded a few thousand messages that had accumulated in my webmail.

And that's when the INBOX simply disappeared. Downloading all the incoming emails from the webmail server was successful, but I cannot get access to any of those emails because there is no INBOX.

Restarting Thunderbird did not help. Rebooting the computer (a Windows 10 PC) did not help.

I am now thinking of uninstalling Thunderbird and then installing the latest version. But I am afraid I will probably lose all those thousands of emails.

Reinstalling won't help. But it also won't lose emails.

Please start *Windows* in safe mode with networking enabled https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode

• Still in Windows safe mode, start Thunderbird in Troubleshoot mode https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-mode-thunderbird

Does problem go away?

A similiar problem has been happening to me for months over multiple versions of thunderbird. Most frequently I loose the entire inbox with it's display preferences I have set. This also happens to my 2 or 3 largest folders (which I use extensively) but not as frequently. I use a IMAP connection to my personal and locally connected linux based email server. I use the same configuration on 4 different workstations running windows 7, 10 & 11. As best I can recall the problem is worst on W10 As this only happens at random intervals I don't think the safe mode suggestions will help. Much as I don't like M$ products I am about ready to return to outlook, very frustrated.