Stupidly deleted entire Inbox & all subfolders. Restored from backup and on startup, TB deletes them all again. HELP!
Can someone please advise. I was cleaning up my gmail account through TB. I spent a long time deleting lots of old messages. Then I stupidly deleted the contents of the 'all mail' folder, which got rid of all the messages I wanted to keep - my Inbox and all Folders are now completely empty. I restored a backup of my .thunderbird profile directory (which I made this morning), which is 8.2GB. However, as soon as I open TB, it automatically proceeds to synchronize with my gmail (I guess whatever is now on Google's server) and therefore deletes everything again (from that particular gmail account - I have 3 in total synchronized with TB), thereby reducing the TB profile size. If I restore the profile and then start TB without connecting to the internet, I have all my messages. I just can't work out how to synchronize everything from TB to gmail, rather than the other way around.
I would be very grateful for some expert advice. Thank you so much.
Hodgy.
Solution choisie
The first time TB opens it will synch with server to show you what is currently on server.
In your backup Profile folder imap gmail account, it should have mbox files (no extension) which contain emails and *.msf files which are indexing files.
So start up TB and allow this to occur. download this addon extension to import the mbox files. ImportExporttools https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
Suggest you import the mbox files into 'Local Folders' first. Then try to put back on server. Right click on email and use 'Copy to' and choose the imap gmail 'All Mail' folder. Click on 'Get Messages' to force a synch.
check the gmail webmail account via a browser to see if those emails went back into 'All Mail' on server. If yes, the proceed in batches to move emails back onto server.
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Solution choisie
The first time TB opens it will synch with server to show you what is currently on server.
In your backup Profile folder imap gmail account, it should have mbox files (no extension) which contain emails and *.msf files which are indexing files.
So start up TB and allow this to occur. download this addon extension to import the mbox files. ImportExporttools https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
Suggest you import the mbox files into 'Local Folders' first. Then try to put back on server. Right click on email and use 'Copy to' and choose the imap gmail 'All Mail' folder. Click on 'Get Messages' to force a synch.
check the gmail webmail account via a browser to see if those emails went back into 'All Mail' on server. If yes, the proceed in batches to move emails back onto server.
Thank you so so much. That has totally worked. I am very much relieved. Instead of copying emails recovered from mbox into 'all mail', I first created new IMAP folders again as sub-directories of Inbox. Once I copied them into the new sub-directories, they automatically synced, with their new folders, to the server. Thanks again.
Hodgy
Good to hear all is now ok. This proves you did the right thing - a good reason to periodically synchronise imap folders for offline use and create a backup of it. Relying solely on what is on the server can be risky. All the best :)