Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

My inbox only displays the last two weeks of mails received, yet my sent mails window reflects all mails sent going back to the beginning. How do I set my inbo

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by christ1

Arthuro62
Arthuro62
more options

My inbox displays only the past two weeks of mails received, yet my outbox (sent mail) shows all mails sent from the beginning of Thunderbird use. How do I set my inbox to reflect or display all the mails received from the beginning of using Thunderbird (a good three years now)?

My inbox displays only the past two weeks of mails received, yet my outbox (sent mail) shows all mails sent from the beginning of Thunderbird use. How do I set my inbox to reflect or display all the mails received from the beginning of using Thunderbird (a good three years now)?

All Replies (4)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

Are you saying you're accumulating all messages in Inbox?

Arthuro62
Arthuro62 Question owner
more options

I would like to, but that is not the case.

Arthuro62
Arthuro62 Question owner
more options

I want to be able to access older emails received, but I do not know how to.

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

Accumulating messages in Inbox isn't best practice. It is recommended to keep Inbox as tidy as possible.

Most likely what happened is that your Inbox file got corrupted. Anti-virus software typically is the culprit for causing corruption.

Check the size of your Inbox mbox file in the file system (via Windows Explorer). Mbox files are the ones storing the email messages. The don't have a file extension. What is the size of your Inbox file? If it's rather small, or even 0 bytes, your messages are gone.

You can only recover them by restoring a recent backup of your Thunderbird profile you created prior to the incident.

To avoid these kind of problems in the future, below are some general recommendations wrt anti-virus software.

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