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Recovering subfolders from backup.

  • 3 cavab
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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

info7089
info7089
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Hi,

due to the current crisis I moved one of my email accounts to a server in a different geological location. Before I did that I backed the account up with the import export NG tools. I did that by exporting the complete account and not the individual folders. Right click on account and then ImportExportToolsNG then Export all the folders (with structure).

It created the files but it turns out the subfolder files are empty. Stupid me, I noticed this after I had deleted them from the server. IMAP took care of the local version before I could stop it.

I had a bit of luck too, the direct inbox and the direct sendbox exports were readable after adding .mbox manually to the files. I was able to recover all the email which where not sorted into subfolders. As I was a bit lazy regarding the sorting, I have most of my more recent mails.

Still the subfolders stay empty and show 0 as file size, so they are not recoverable with this method.

I am the second time lucky as I had made a complete backup of all drives about 4 weeks ago with EaseUS. Which means the subfolders content should be somewhere in that system backup file. I can browse the folder structure inside the EaseUS system backup all the way to the folders in the user data of thunderbird. Question is, I do not see anything called like my subfolders, for example one of them which was called "projects" and had other subfolders in it. What I need help with, is to know which of these folders I need to recover to find my subfolders. Secondly, of how I could do this without overwriting my existing current Thunderbird file structure, because these contain now also those emails from the last 4 weeks (but not the subfolders.)

Thank you so much for your help,

Fran

Hi, due to the current crisis I moved one of my email accounts to a server in a different geological location. Before I did that I backed the account up with the import export NG tools. I did that by exporting the complete account and not the individual folders. Right click on account and then ImportExportToolsNG then Export all the folders (with structure). It created the files but it turns out the subfolder files are empty. Stupid me, I noticed this after I had deleted them from the server. IMAP took care of the local version before I could stop it. I had a bit of luck too, the direct inbox and the direct sendbox exports were readable after adding .mbox manually to the files. I was able to recover all the email which where not sorted into subfolders. As I was a bit lazy regarding the sorting, I have most of my more recent mails. Still the subfolders stay empty and show 0 as file size, so they are not recoverable with this method. I am the second time lucky as I had made a complete backup of all drives about 4 weeks ago with EaseUS. Which means the subfolders content should be somewhere in that system backup file. I can browse the folder structure inside the EaseUS system backup all the way to the folders in the user data of thunderbird. Question is, I do not see anything called like my subfolders, for example one of them which was called "projects" and had other subfolders in it. What I need help with, is to know which of these folders I need to recover to find my subfolders. Secondly, of how I could do this without overwriting my existing current Thunderbird file structure, because these contain now also those emails from the last 4 weeks (but not the subfolders.) Thank you so much for your help, Fran

All Replies (3)

info7089
info7089 Question owner
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Attached the folder structure to which I can browse to in the backup. The subfolders where directly created under Inbox.

info7089
info7089 Question owner
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Anyone can help?

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Question is, I do not see anything called like my subfolders, for example one of them which was called "projects" and had other subfolders in it.

Look in... Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/profile name/ImapMail/imap mail account name folder. To see the 'projects' folder and its subfolders, you would need: A 'projects' mbox file (this allows Thunderbird to know about the 'projects.sbd' folder) A 'projects.msf' file (an index file) A 'projects.sbd' folder (this would contain the subfolders as mbox files and msf files).

All three would be required. If you have a 'projects.sbd' folder but nothing else, then you can create a new mbox file. Thunderbird must not be running. File > New > Text Document call it: projects it must be spelt exactly the same as the projects.sbd folder This will create a text document file called projects.txt Then you rename the file to remove the .txt part. You will be asked if you really want to do this and you do. This will create the projects mbox file. When you restart Thunderbird an index file will get created and you should then see the subfolders that were in the 'projects.sbd' folder.


First image shows 'smart mailboxes'. When you use 'Unified' view, this creates files in the 'smart mailboxes' folder. It faciliates the creation of virtual folders to show eg: all emails from all mail account 'Inbox' folders in one 'Inbox' virtual folder - a bit like a search result. I can see mbox files (no extension) and *.msf files (index files). There is no information regarding size, but in my experience there would not be any size because emails are not actually stored in this location.

Second image shows contents of the default 'Local Folders' mail account. 'Unsent Messages' is the 'Outbox'.

'Drafts-info@***********.**' is an mbox file (no extension) - if it has any size then there may be draft emails stored. 'Drafts-fran@***********.**' should be an mbox file (no extension) - if it has any size then there may be draft emails stored. However, the 'Drafts-fran' one looks like you have tried to open it using an unknown program as it has the wrong icon for that file. You can open mbox files using a simple text editor program like 'Notepad++'. It would seem you created these folders.