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Senior moment - lost emails

  • 2 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

Pedro
Pedro
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Oh boy. I use Thunderbird as my limited company business email account. Have not received any emails since 12th August. I realize that I set up a message filter to delete a certain sender but set it up to delete all emails (senior moment, ugh!). This is a POP3 account with the intention of keeping all received emails and archiving the old ones off at annual intervals. The deleted emails are not in the deleted folder, presumably they are deleted before they even reach the email account. As this is a POP3 account these emails are presumably still on the server, can these emails be recovered?

Oh boy. I use Thunderbird as my limited company business email account. Have not received any emails since 12th August. I realize that I set up a message filter to delete a certain sender but set it up to delete all emails (senior moment, ugh!). This is a POP3 account with the intention of keeping all received emails and archiving the old ones off at annual intervals. The deleted emails are not in the deleted folder, presumably they are deleted before they even reach the email account. As this is a POP3 account these emails are presumably still on the server, can these emails be recovered?

All Replies (2)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Whether the messages are still on server depends on the email host's preferences. Some keep for awhile, and some let the messages be deleted. You might try accessing the account online to see if the messages are there. Another option is to contact your email host to see if they can restore the messages.

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 25 Contributor
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As David says - logon to webmail account using a browser to see if the emails are still on the server.

re : I realize that I set up a message filter to delete a certain sender but set it up to delete all emails

I presume you have disabled or deleted that Message Filter - if not yet then do it now.

If you had the POP account set up to download emails and 'Leave messages on server' then hopefully they should still be on the server.

All Pop account folders have a 'popstate.dat' file. It keeps a record of what has been downloaded, so that it does not download again. If you delete that popstate.dat file, a new one gets created - it is blank - it has no idea what has been previously downloaded, so it just allows a download of whatever is in the server Inbox.

How to remove/delete the 'popstate.dat' file

In Thunderbird

  • Menu icon > Help > More TRoubleshooting Information
  • Under 'Application Basics' half way down - Profile Folder - click on 'Open Folder'
  • A new window opens showing the contents of your profile name folder
  • Exit Thunderbird now - this is important
  • click on 'Mail' folder
  • click on the pop mail account name folder
  • It will contain a 'popstate.dat' file - delete it.

Start Thunderbird A new popstate.dat file gets created and it is blank, so when Thunderbird connects to server, anything in the server Inbox should get downloaded.