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How to locate and restore a deleted mail folder from HD backup

  • 3 replies
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  • Last reply by david

Bill Falls
Bill Falls
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One of my mail folders has disappeared from Thunderbird, perhaps accidentally deleted but it's not in the Trash folder. My questions are:

1. Can I restore it to my SSD from my backup drive (Seagate drive with their Toolkit backup software)?

2. If so, where do I look on my drive and backup for my mail folder files? I used to know where they were but the path appears to have changed, and a search of my C: drive didn't locate them.

I'm running Thunderbird 110.0b1 (64-bit), beta, on Windows 11 Home. The emails come from a POP server and are stored only on my PC, not on the server.

One of my mail folders has disappeared from Thunderbird, perhaps accidentally deleted but it's not in the Trash folder. My questions are: 1. Can I restore it to my SSD from my backup drive (Seagate drive with their Toolkit backup software)? 2. If so, where do I look on my drive and backup for my mail folder files? I used to know where they were but the path appears to have changed, and a search of my C: drive didn't locate them. I'm running Thunderbird 110.0b1 (64-bit), beta, on Windows 11 Home. The emails come from a POP server and are stored only on my PC, not on the server.

Chosen solution

The default location for POP accounts is at c:\users\<yourID>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<yourprofile>\Mail

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david
david
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Chosen Solution

The default location for POP accounts is at c:\users\<yourID>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<yourprofile>\Mail

Bill Falls
Bill Falls Question owner
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Thanks, David, that's where it always was in the past but I'd looked almost everywhere in my current profile (for the TB beta installation) without finding a Mail folder.

Finally I noticed another profile for today's "release" version, mixed in with some older profiles (2021 and earlier), and it did have a Mail folder including the parent of the lost folder. Unfortunately, it matches today's version of my mail folders and is missing the folder I need.

Then I went to my backup drive, but none of the incremental backups include /appdata/. That suggests a problem with my backup configuration - maybe appdata counts as a system folder? So the lost folder is not recoverable, and I'll try to fix my backup settings so they include folders like appdata.

Thank you for the help. Maybe I missed a warning to beta users that their beta profile doesn't actually include mail files.

david
david
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If desired, the profile can be moved elsewhere, e.g., c:\PROFILE instead of the appdata setup. Thunderbird just looks at the ...appdata\thunderbird\profiles.ini text file which points to the location. As a side comment, I do not recommend use of beta for anything other than testing new releases.