What happened to the emails in my local folders?
My wife's Local Folders are mostly empty. Something has deleted the emails in the folders. This seems to have happened over a period of years, unfortunately without being noticed.
My question is: 1. Why is this happening? Note that the Disk Space setting for Local Folders is "Never Delete". 2. I have backups that stretch over a decade. These are complete snapshots of the entire directories. Any suggestions on how to restore the emails?
We are on Linux.
Chosen solution
Hello
1) Sorry, my crystal ball has been out of service since some time now.
2) Check that your backups are good by restoring the Thunderbird profile in a separate directory. Do NOT restore anything into the current profile. Check for example that you have files with .msf extensions in this new directory (the data files themselves have no extension, only the name can give a hint of what they are, however the index files are easy to detect). If you find interesting files, install the Thunderbird addon ImportExportTools NG, then create a new directory in Local Folders and right click it, select import messages from the ImportExport menu, then try to select a mail file. Good luck.
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Hello
1) Sorry, my crystal ball has been out of service since some time now.
2) Check that your backups are good by restoring the Thunderbird profile in a separate directory. Do NOT restore anything into the current profile. Check for example that you have files with .msf extensions in this new directory (the data files themselves have no extension, only the name can give a hint of what they are, however the index files are easy to detect). If you find interesting files, install the Thunderbird addon ImportExportTools NG, then create a new directory in Local Folders and right click it, select import messages from the ImportExport menu, then try to select a mail file. Good luck.
I wonder if somehow the setting to keep emails in Local Folders got changed and I changed it back about a year ago (date of the last good backup).
I installed that extension and was able to import the MBOX files.
Thanks!
> I wonder if somehow the setting to keep emails in Local Folders got changed and I changed it back about a year ago (date of the last good backup).
Unlikely. The place to look is seen in these screen shots.
per folder settings ...
