Hi DarreD, If I understand correctly, you're saying that you recently lost years of messages, and would like to prevent that from happening again by backing up your current data.

Backing up your Thunderbird is really easy.

1. Close Thunderbird.
2. Press +R on the keyboard to open the Run dialog.
3. Type %APPDATA% then click OK.
4. Right-click on the \Thunderbird\ folder, and select Copy.
5. Go to the drive you are using to hold your backup, then right-click inside the drive, and select Paste.

Were you using Thunderbird to read your 10+ years of emails in your Hotmail account? Maybe there's an old copy of your Thunderbird data somewhere that you can restore.

Thanks Chris, that's really helpful to know. Unfortunately, I had no backup or Thunderbird on my computer. The only records are held on the Microsoft servers so I have no way of recovering them and I've had no help from Microsoft whatsoever. So, once bitten, twice shy! Regards, Darrell.