Lost local folder still visible in Search
In transferring my profile from PC to laptop, something went wrong and I lost all of my local folders, with years of emails in them. I have searched all parts of the Thunderbird folder under Roaming, and have been unable to find the folders.
The weird thing is that when I do a search for a particular subject or email that I know was in one of the local folders, the search still gives results showing the email headings. It will, however, not display the results as a list or open any of the emails.
The fact that the folders and emails appear in the search leads me to believe that they are still somewhere on my PC.
Does anyone have any advice on where they might be or how to find them?
All Replies (4)
If your search results cannot be displayed as a list or only an empty list, your search data seem outdated. Open the Thunderbird profile folder as described in this article https://mzl.la/2cYKHaB When the profile folder is displayed quit Thunderbird and delete the global-messages-db.sqlite file. Still in the profile folder go to Mail > Local Folders and make a screenshot of its contents to publish in your next reply. I think that you forgot your Local Folders when migrating from PC to laptop.
Restart TB and wait that TB recreates the deleted file, then repeat the same search as before. Do you still get the same results?
Hi Mapenzi
Following what you suggested, results in the search no longer giving the results that it found before. Unfortunately it does nothing to recover the local folders that I lost.
Ezalaki modifié na Nils Schwarz
Nils Schwarz said
Unfortunately it does nothing to recover the local folders that I lost.
The renewal of that file was just to prove that the search results were biased because your Local Folders are not populated with messages or at least that TB has no viable access to them if there are any messages. That's why I asked you to make a screenshot of the contents of your Local Folders in the Mail folder. If one has a big folder hierarchy in Local Folders it sometimes happens that a 0 kB mbox file at the top of the pyramid gets deleted by some eager cleaning tool with the effect that TB can no longer display sub-folders and messages of the hierarchy. Recreating the deleted mbox file in a text editor in general solves the problem and sub-folders and messages will be displayed again in Thunderbird's Local Folders. I have witnessed this poisonous effect of cleaning tools several times in the German TB forum.
If you still have access to TB on your PC, open the profile folder, go to Mail > Local Folders, copy the entire Local Folders and transfer it to your laptop. On the laptop - TB closed - open the profile folder, go to Mail and replace the actuel Local Folders with the copy from the PC. Restart TB.
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