Sounds like you were using an imap mail account.

Imap mail accounts show what is on server.

re: email hosting and my subscription expired, When you failed to update subscription, it may well be that all your emails were deleted off server as you technically did not have a live account, but you would need to ask whomever hosts email whether that occurred. It is worth asking if it is possible to retrieve them as they would regulary have made backups just in case their server failed for any reason.

When you reconnected with an empty server, all your folders would be synchronizing with empty folders. Hence why you cannot see any emails.

You should have got copies from imap account into Local Folders before connecting to the empty server.

If you only ever downloaded headers then the full emails would only get retrieved from server upon selecting to view the email. In these cases the emails were never actually downloaded into Thunderbird mbox files.

If you synchronised folders for offline use, then a copy would have been downloaded. You could try to see if it is possible to get those emails back. Use this addon extension: https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/index-en.html#recDelMsg

Hello,

I tried the addon and no email were retrieved. When my email was wiped I could still access all my emails through thunderbird and all the files inside the emails it just kept giving me a pop up asking for me to enter a password. As soon as I entered the password the whole mailbox cleared out.

This is when it is good to understand how email works. Since you synced your mail on Thunderbird and seem to have the option under Sync and Storage turned on to keep messages on this computer it still had those copies. You should have moved those email to folders under the Local Folders account BEFORE you decided to sync Thunderbird with an empty server. Thunderbird did what you asked, Sync with what was on the server which was nothing.

Google POP vs IMAP so you know how the 2 protocols work and differ. Then decide which one works best for you. Then make backups. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

re :When my email was wiped I could still access all my emails through thunderbird This is what occurred, so I'll elaborate a bit to explain how an imap mail account works. This is not a Thunderbird thing; it is how all imap mail accounts work.

You could see emails because you had synchronised the folders before the account expired. Thunderbird had not been able to synchronise with server as password was no good because contract expired, so it still had a copy of server folders in the old state.

You discovered:

1. all mail on server had been wiped out.
2. only Thunderbird had a copy

At this point your only copy (assuming you had not made any backups) was still in the imap mail account providing you did not connect to an empty server.

This is when you should have moved all the emails out of the imap account and put them into 'Local Folders' account for safe keeping.

As you use an imap mail account, imap mail accounts only show a virtual copy of what is on server. So when you entered the password and connected to server it does exactly that, it looks at server, synchronises with server and shows exactly what is on server.

Senario: Imagine you have two computers, both set up to use the same imap mail account to connect with server. Emails are stored on server. Both computers have an identical copy of what is on server. On first computer, you delete an email and folder synchronises with server to update it. Email gets deleted off server. You use the second computer, the imap account synchronises with server and immediately the email you had deleted using the first computer will now disappear from the second computer without you doing anything.

The imap folders and the server folders are in essence one and the same.

This explains why you have lost the emails. You allowed a synchronisation of imap folders with known empty server folders. The server updated your imap mail account.

So, unless you have a backup you have lost those emails.

Pop mail accounts can only access and download from a server Inbox. Emails are not stored on the server unless you instruct it to keep messages on server. Pop mail account folders do not show what is on server and often emails are auto deleted off server upon download. When you send emails, those emails are only in the pop mail account, they are not on the server as there is no synchronisation. So the only copy could be in the pop mail account.

Backups are required regardless of whether you use imap or pop because essentially there is only one copy.

Synchronising imap folders for offline use offers imap accounts the opportunity to download full copies of emails before going into offline mode. Then in Offline mode, which stops further synchronising, you can make a backup of your profile as it is at that moment, which would include all emails.

This info should help in the future, although it is not much use in retrieving lost emails. I suggest you try asking those who host the account if they can help to reinstate emails.