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

Messages not imported correctly

  • 3 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

Sometimes, often after an upgrade, messages IMAPed to Thunderbird do not display correctly. In two recent cases I moved two messages from the Spam folder to the Inbox. One of the messages was completely blank except for the subject. The other displayed HTML code instead of the readable messages. Both messages displayed correctly at my email provider's website. Is there a way or can you provide a way to tell Thunderbird to re-import a message?

Sometimes, often after an upgrade, messages IMAPed to Thunderbird do not display correctly. In two recent cases I moved two messages from the Spam folder to the Inbox. One of the messages was completely blank except for the subject. The other displayed HTML code instead of the readable messages. Both messages displayed correctly at my email provider's website. Is there a way or can you provide a way to tell Thunderbird to re-import a message?

Chosen solution

generally display issues, which is what I read you as having are caused by things like antivirus programs and choices like placing the profile folders in non standard locations which are subject to streaming backups or cloud synchronization, or even locations that are not physically internal to the device.

In most cases right clicking the folder, selection properties and then the repair button to re-index the store will fix those display issues.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (3)

more options

Chosen Solution

generally display issues, which is what I read you as having are caused by things like antivirus programs and choices like placing the profile folders in non standard locations which are subject to streaming backups or cloud synchronization, or even locations that are not physically internal to the device.

In most cases right clicking the folder, selection properties and then the repair button to re-index the store will fix those display issues.

more options

The repair button restored the garbled message and the blank one. Thank you. It might be faster if you could select the messages to repair or repair only those that display after a filter is applied to the messages.

more options

rmrubinsl said

The repair button restored the garbled message and the blank one. Thank you. It might be faster if you could select the messages to repair or repair only those that display after a filter is applied to the messages.

The mail folder consists of two files, a mail storage file which could be many gigabytes in size. The second file is essentially an index which contains the information Thunderbird shows in the lists on the screen, and a pointer to where the data is stored in the mail file for when you actually select that email to read.

Repair rebuilds this index. It is not actually repairing any data as such, despite the name. It is also why the process is slow as the entire file needs to be read to build the index.