You proved again (as many people before you as well) that accumulating messages in Inbox is a bad idea. Most likely your messages are gone. Did you create a backup of your Thunderbird profile folder? Anti-virus software is often causing Thunderbird mail file corruption resulting in data loss. To prevent this problem in the future follow these suggestions. Create an exception in your anti-virus software for the Thunderbird profile folder, so that the anti-virus real-time scanner will not scan it. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird Don't let your anti-virus software scan incoming and outgoing messages. Don't let your anti-virus software scan attachments. Don't let your anti-virus software intercept your secure connection to the server. Remove any add-ons your anti-virus software may have installed in Thunderbird. Keep it working. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_-_Thunderbird And last but not least, backup your Thunderbird profile on a regular basis. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile