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Restoring lost IMAP mail on local computer

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  • Viimati vastas asopao

asopao
asopao
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I had accidentally deleted email from the Inbox on my email account on the server. The email provider has no backup server (!). I was confused about an IMAP connection synching with the server. I opened Thunderbird on my computer (Windows 10), which resulted in the Inbox emails all being lost from my account. I have searched with Recuva (Piriform) for lost files, and found a 2Gb Thunderbird Zipfile. Recuva says it has not been overwritten, but no date is given on the file. I hope this is the file with the removed emails.

How can I restore those lost emails? They must be still written on the drive, maybe in this discovered Thunderbird zipfile.

Thanks!

I had accidentally deleted email from the Inbox on my email account on the server. The email provider has no backup server (!). I was confused about an IMAP connection synching with the server. I opened Thunderbird on my computer (Windows 10), which resulted in the Inbox emails all being lost from my account. I have searched with Recuva (Piriform) for lost files, and found a 2Gb Thunderbird Zipfile. Recuva says it has not been overwritten, but no date is given on the file. I hope this is the file with the removed emails. How can I restore those lost emails? They must be still written on the drive, maybe in this discovered Thunderbird zipfile. Thanks!

All Replies (4)

asopao
asopao Küsimuse esitaja
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UPDATE: I checked through the 2GB zipfile. It seems to be a much older set of emails, prior to 2010, not the current set I am looking for which are post 2012

Matt
Matt
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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I suggest strongly that you forget you ever heard of Recuva. It is about the best way I know of to actually loose data. It is a powerful tool that like a race car is more than the average user can handle. You are also looking for deleted files. There will be none.

  1. Open the troubleshooting information on the help menu.
  2. Click the show profile button in the troubleshooting information.
  3. Close Thunderbird.
  4. In the file manager window that opens open the imap mail folder.
  5. Open the folder named after the mail server.
  6. Locate the file inbox. It will also be an inbox.msf. (If mail was actually downloaded and not just headers, there will be two files (the default) if you changed to headers only then we are wasting time.)
  7. Copy the inbox file NOT the MSF file to your desktop.
  8. Open the file with a text editor. Notepad will do if the fileis small. Otherwise you might want to download motepad++. Do not use a word processor like word or Libreoffice or all bets are off, they will corrupt the data.
  9. open the file and do a find an replace. on X-Mozilla-Status: 0008 to X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
  10. Close and save the file.
  1. Open Thunderbird
  2. Install the import export tools add on if you have not already. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
  3. Restart Thunderbird to ensure the install is complete
  4. Make a folder in local folders.
  5. right click on it once selected and choose importexporttools. choose to import an mbox file and point it to the file you have edited on your desktop.
asopao
asopao Küsimuse esitaja
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Thanks - in the server folder under the IMAP folder, (opening with Note Pad) the inbox file X-Mozilla-Status references are all X-Mozilla-Status: 0001. So there is nothing to edit.There are very few messages listed.

I did open the email once after everything disappeared, with the internet connection on. Maybe this is why I see no reference to the older messages in this file? But they must still be on the harddrive...

Thanks so much!

asopao
asopao Küsimuse esitaja
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I mean, after the Inbox emails were deleted from Thunderbird on my computer, I did open Thunderbird one other time, when connected to the internet. Maybe when I closed Thunderbird this time, all reference to those deleted emails (labeled with X-Mozilla-Status: 0008) was deleted from the Inbox? But I would think the emails are still on the harddrive.. just not accessible.

Thanks for any advice.