I'm writing this with a pit in my stomach... -For over a decade, I've been using an email address set up with my ISP. xxx@verizon.net -Awhile back, Verizon stopped supporting the email process, and moved it to aol. But things continued as aol provided support for Verizons mail clients. I was able to use that xxx@verizon.net at the aol mail site to do email via a browser, and the Thunderbird client on my Mac continued to work fine. -I moved and had to give up Verizon as an ISP. aol said I could continue as before. All worked well until recently. -aol has recently sent out instructions to adhere to some security need they saw with a deadline of 06 December whereby they said in Thunderbird, ->Tools|Account Settings, select my account (xxx@verizon.net), -> Account Actions, and Remove the account. Then add account. I used the same account name and all looked good. They said this'd activate the "secure sign-in method for your account". I quit and restarted Thunderbird, and ALL mail has vanished. I'm hoping that since Thunderbird had been set to pull down messages to my Mac and delete the message from the server, that there is a container on my system that I can get at to regain access to my old mail. Are my hopes misplaced? If not, how can I go about roping that old mail into this "new" account? I'd appreciate any thoughts. Thanks in advance. Mike