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How can I restore tags that have disappeared from emails in my inbox?

  • 4 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 91 views
  • Last reply by ulrikke

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I tag emails as "Work", "Important", "To do", etc., and in my inbox view I click on Tags and the right category to see all emails that are tagged "Work", for instance. While working with this group of emails, I must have clicked somewhere I shouldn't, because something that looked like stop signs (red circles with a white horizontal stripe) appeared in the outermost left column. I wasn't able to get rid of them and since they didn't look like they were doing anything wrong (they appeared on only some of the emails in the list), I left them there. But then, when removing the tag filter and then going back to it later, I discovered that many of the emails were missing. (I don't know for sure, but I am guessing the same as the ones that had the red circle). I couldn't fint the emails by searching for them either, but there were still in my inbox when I used another email client (on my iphone, for instance). After searching in Mozilla support and having tried various solutions, I finally managed to restore the emails by using the function "Restore folder". This is excellent, because they are important emails, but when I now filter my inbox for Tags, I only get a very short list of tagged emails. Most of the tags are gone from mye emails. (But not all of them!) I use this system instead of creating several subfolders, so this complicated my work a lot. Is there any way I can restore the tags? Thanks a million in advance.

I tag emails as "Work", "Important", "To do", etc., and in my inbox view I click on Tags and the right category to see all emails that are tagged "Work", for instance. While working with this group of emails, I must have clicked somewhere I shouldn't, because something that looked like stop signs (red circles with a white horizontal stripe) appeared in the outermost left column. I wasn't able to get rid of them and since they didn't look like they were doing anything wrong (they appeared on only some of the emails in the list), I left them there. But then, when removing the tag filter and then going back to it later, I discovered that many of the emails were missing. (I don't know for sure, but I am guessing the same as the ones that had the red circle). I couldn't fint the emails by searching for them either, but there were still in my inbox when I used another email client (on my iphone, for instance). After searching in Mozilla support and having tried various solutions, I finally managed to restore the emails by using the function "Restore folder". This is excellent, because they are important emails, but when I now filter my inbox for Tags, I only get a very short list of tagged emails. Most of the tags are gone from mye emails. (But not all of them!) I use this system instead of creating several subfolders, so this complicated my work a lot. Is there any way I can restore the tags? Thanks a million in advance.

Chosen solution

Yes, I think that since they didn't remain after a folder repair, the new msf index file replaced the old one with the tags.

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First, I don't know what the 'stop sign' icon means - perhaps added by a security program scanning your email? Second, the tags are stored in the msf index files, and some IMAP servers do not support keywords. It looks like yours does not, since when you performed a "Restore" (Repair from the folder Properties context menu), which rebuilds the index file, most of the tags disappeared.

So, I guess you have a choice of retagging the messages, or finding an IMAP server that supports keywords, or substituting subfolders for tags.

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Thanks for this reply. Just to double check: Does this mean that the tags I had are lost?

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Chosen Solution

Yes, I think that since they didn't remain after a folder repair, the new msf index file replaced the old one with the tags.

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Ok, thanks, then I won't spend any more time looking for them.