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Hi, All my message in Inbox disappeared in Thunderbird. Everything else works. Please help.

  • 11 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by enjoylifee

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Hi,

I have over 12 email accounts configured on my Thunderbird and all the emails stays in the Inbox folder. Suddenly (I guess while compacting), all my Inbox was deleted. I have over 7000 emails and I am worried how can I get this back.

I tried deleting Inbox.msf but it didnt help. I tried to look into other solutions on the Internet but it didnt work too.

If anyone can help on this, I would really appreciate that.

Thanks, Vik

Hi, I have over 12 email accounts configured on my Thunderbird and all the emails stays in the Inbox folder. Suddenly (I guess while compacting), all my Inbox was deleted. I have over 7000 emails and I am worried how can I get this back. I tried deleting Inbox.msf but it didnt help. I tried to look into other solutions on the Internet but it didnt work too. If anyone can help on this, I would really appreciate that. Thanks, Vik

All Replies (11)

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Please read this article and check everything is says: Disappearing mail

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Thank You. Let me look. Will get back. Thanks again. Vik

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None of it helped. I checked these before and now I am lost. I dont know what to do. Its really strange how I lost all of my emails..

Vik

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Am I correct in assuming that you are using POP with all 12 e-mail accounts, and they all use the same Inbox?

Please post here your Troubleshooting Information from Thunderbird:

Press the Alt key or F10 key on your keyboard to show the Thunderbird menu. Thunderbird menu: Help: Troubleshooting Information Click the "Copy text to clipboard" button. Paste (Ctrl-V), the text into your response here.

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Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 45.6.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.6.0
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 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (pop3) mail.esigners.in:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.in:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext
   account4:
     INCOMING: account4, , (pop3) mail.esigners.co:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.co:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
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     INCOMING: account6, , (pop3) mail.esigners.in:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.in:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account7:
     INCOMING: account7, , (pop3) mail.headerguru.com:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.headerguru.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account9:
     INCOMING: account9, , (pop3) mail.esigners.in:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.in:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account13:
     INCOMING: account13, , (imap) hp88.hostpapa.com:993, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , hp88.hostpapa.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true
   account14:
     INCOMING: account14, , (pop3) mail.stunningworks.co.uk:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.stunningworks.co.uk:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account15:
     INCOMING: account15, , (pop3) mail.stunningworks.com:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.stunningworks.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account16:
     INCOMING: account16, , (pop3) mail.stunningworks.com:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.stunningworks.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account17:
     INCOMING: account17, , (imap) zebrafever.com.au:993, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , zebrafever.com.au:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true
   account18:
     INCOMING: account18, , (pop3) mail.esigners.ca:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.ca:25, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account19:
     INCOMING: account19, , (pop3) mail.esigners.ca:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.ca:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account21:
     INCOMING: account21, , (pop3) mail.mithakhatta.com:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.mithakhatta.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account22:
     INCOMING: account22, , (pop3) mail.mithakhatta.com:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.mithakhatta.com:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
   account25:
     INCOMING: account25, , (pop3) mail.esigners.us:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , mail.esigners.us:587, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext, true
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   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-3f8c099c-8fd9-4568-8a93-896382161130 (30-11-2016)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-20923cc5-9db4-46fc-92ff-ae4dd2161122 (22-11-2016)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-ee490db9-6eb6-44e5-bc8a-da5812160127 (27-01-2016)
   http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-874c967b-12d2-41f4-b46a-709ca2150926 (26-09-2015)
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You have 13 POP e-mail accounts and 2 IMAP e-mail accounts. You didn't answer my question as to whether the POP accounts all use the same Inbox or not. I will assume that they do.

Your problem is that the single file that holds all the e-mail for your Inbox has become corrupted, or the .msf file has been corrupted. Or perhaps the global database needs to be rebuilt.

The Inbox is the most used folder in Thunderbird with messages going in and out of it constantly. So it is the folder that is most likely to have problems. If you keep thousands of e-mails in it also, that makes it exponentially more likely for problems with the folder.

It is recommended (Keep it working - Thunderbird), that:

Keep the Inbox empty. Move new messages that you want to keep to another folder after you've read them. This may help avoid corrupting your Inbox folder, and will help maintain best performance.

Regularly compact your Inbox folder and any folders from which you delete messages in or move messages. Once a week is a useful rule of thumb, though...

Regularly back up your profile

No on to recovering your Inbox.

If you haven't already, backup your Thunderbird Profile.

Make sure that Thunderbird is not running, then find that Inbox file, delete the .msf file (yes I know you already did this, do it again now). Then delete the global-messages-db.sqlite file as instructed in Rebuilding the Global Database. Don't restart Thunderbird yet.

One more step, to maximize the possibility of success.

Go get that Inbox file from the backup you made of the Profile Folder, and make a copy of it with a different name, in the same location as the Inbox file in your Profile. Now you will have two copies of the Inbox file, so two possibilities of recovery.

Then restart Thunderbird.

If the original Inbox is still unusable, then the file for it is probably corrupted on the hard drive, but hopefully the copy of the Inbox will be usable.

Run a Check Disk. How to run a "Check Disk" in Windows. You are running Windows 10, so follow the instructions for running a "proper" Check Disk for Windows 10.

Perhaps that will fix the original Inbox.

Once your issue is solved, then move all those e-mails out of the Inbox to other folders. Read all of Keep it working - Thunderbird and make use of its advice.

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Apologies for my delayed response. I will try this today and revert.

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Looks like nothing works for me. I have index.msf in each individual mail folders. Hope thats the right file I deleted from each folders and then after taking the backup of profile, I copied the index.msf files in respective folders with "indexbkup.msf" and deleted the global-messages-db.sqlite file as instructed.

While restarting Thunderbird, I see "Downloading 89/503 in old emails. But thats not the right emails I was wanting. I have had around 1 years email in my inbox which was not segregated in respective folders and I guess were more than 3000 emails. I dont know but it looks like I have lost my earlier emails. Any other help is much appreciated.

Thanks, Vik

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If the old e-mails were not permanently gone before, your delay in trying to recover them ensured that they are probably permanently gone now.

I don't think there is any way you are going to get them back, unless you had backed them up.

As a computer technician, I always say, "If you don't back it up, expect to lose it". That and, "If it was important, you would have backed it up."

Moving forward:

Read and follow the advice in the article: Keep it working - Thunderbird

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Thanks for your time. A lesson well learnt. I will still try and see is anything works out.

Have a fantastic evening ahead. Vik