Moved inbox emails to new folder and they dissappeared after I pressed compact
Hello all. I tried to move the messages in my inbox to a "2017" subfolder to tidy it up. After I selected all the messages and moved them, Thunderbird asked me if I wanted to compact all folders to save disk space. I accidentally clicked yes and as a result, several hundred emails from my inbox folder that I intended to move to my 2017 folder have now disappeared. I can, however, still see the messages in the search results but am unable to open up the actual email if I try to click on it. For what it's worth, I've compacted my disk many times in the past but it has never deleted any of my emails.
So far, I've tried to repair my folders but has not worked. How can I restore these old emails?
All Replies (3)
For what it's worth, I just tried the solutions in these topics and they did not fix my issue.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1137074 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1050806
You compacted a folder and then lost emails.
It would seem that you compacted a file that for some unknown reason was corrupted. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_Tips_:_Compacting_Folders#Undoing_compacting
If you have repaired the folder index file, then it will now be showing you what is really in the Inbox mbox file. But you can check this by doing the following.
Make hidden files and folders visible: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders
In Thunderbird Help > Troubleshooting Information click on 'Open folder' a new window opens showing the contents of your profile folder name. If pop account: click on 'Mail' folder If imap mail account: click on 'ImapMail' folder
click on mail account name for imap: If you selected to synchronise folders to store copies in your profile there will be an Inbox (no extension) mbox file and an Inbox.msf file. Inbox (no extension) mbox file contains the emails. You can open this file using Notepad or Notepad++ Oldest emails will be at the top.
If a search still locates headers but when selected does not open the email, this means the global index is not up to date.
At this point Exit Thunderbird because you cannot do anything to profile folders whilst Thunderbird is open
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database
Modified by Toad-Hall
Neither of these suggestions will help right now but I suggest you learn about Archiving.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/archived-messages
I'm also suggest you use Copy to instead of Move to. This way you can make sure the messages made the transition and still have the originals before deleting them. As stated in the archive article do this in small batches.