thunderbird loses "inbox" contents

[j-retired]

I've been using TB3 for a few weeks, and after initially not liking it, decided it was OK. (Maybe .... even... good?)
Then yesterday, the "inbox" panel, which has faithfully been showing ALL my incoming mail (which was also delivered to the individual account inboxes) went blank.  It's EMPTY!  All my mail still exists in it's respective folders, but I have no overall view now, and I had come to like that.
What have I done? I have tried all the settings I can think of - no luck.
 
HELP!!!!

j

[AndrzejL]

Did You deleted or moved /home/user/.thunderbird folder? Renamed it? Any files inside it? Changed anything in Your home folder?

Maybe new profile was created for Your thunderbird? Check the content of the folder mentioned above. In my case the location of the files containing emails /home/andrzejl/.thunderbird/somenumbersandletters.default/Mail/

In this folder there should be some folders. In those folders there should be files (sometimes large) and in those files is hidden the compressed content of the Inbox Sent etc folders.

Check thunderbird account settings for the compression / deletion of old messages too.

Hope this helps...

Andy

[j-retired]

Not by any intended action. I guess I probably did something though..... but what?  The only thing I can think of is that I backed up the mail folders in ".thunderbird" to a USB stick, but didn't deliberately change anything.
Even wild ideas will be gratefully accepted and tried!

j

[AndrzejL]

This option I had in mind too:

Not by any intended action. I guess I probably did something though..... but what?  The only thing I can think of is that I backed up the mail folders in ".thunderbird" to a USB stick, but didn't deliberately change anything.
Even wild ideas will be gratefully accepted and tried!

j

Did You moved it? Or did You copied it?

Andy

[AndrzejL]

Can You try this:

Close thunderbird.

Go to Your home folder and rename the .thunderbird folder to .thunderbird_bkp and the copy the .thunderbird folder from the pendrive back to the home folder.

Reopen thunderbird.

Lets see if this will bring it back...

Andy

[j-retired]

I'd already tried reloading the backed up data - no change.  I have about 8 accounts on this, and 2 load to "local folder". When I look at "disk space" those 2 only have the first line of options, about "messages larger than...". The rest are as your pic.However, still no joy, but thanks for the ideas.

An annoying feature about this is that I was becoming a "convert" to TB3!

j

[AndrzejL]

To be honest using it for ages with no pain. Are Your messages safe on the original accounts? My gmail is archiving them - not deleting so they could still be somewhere there on the server.

Try this

Right click in the inbox folder and choose properties. Then check where are the emails stored. Check does the file exists. What size is it? Permissions?

How many folders named numbersANDletter.default do You have in You .thunderbird folder?

I think that either the files were deleted or that another profile was created but then the accounts would not exist and you would have to redo them...

Maybe someone smarter then me is needed here..

Andy

[j-retired]

Interesting....
When I Rclick on "local folders", I get what you get.  When I do the same on "inbox" I get a "search" facility with no useful pointers!  Rebuilding thi index from 'Local' has no effect on 'inbox'.
All my messages are there, in their individual boxes, but no "general display".

TY,
j

[j-retired]

Something just occurred to me!  The default account (pop3) which used to download to "inbox" stopped doing so a while back.  I can only access it via webmail now. I think that happened soon after I loaded TB3, but can't be sure...    However all its old emails are still in the 'local' inbox.
I wish I had a better memory!

j

[AndrzejL]

Interesting....
When I Rclick on "local folders", I get what you get.  When I do the same on "inbox" I get a "search" facility with no useful pointers!  Rebuilding thi index from 'Local' has no effect on 'inbox'.
All my messages are there, in their individual boxes, but no "general display".

TY,
j

Have no idea how to help You... Sorry. Maybe someone smarter will step in here... Or maybe when I wake up tomorrow I can think of something else. Hard disk corruption? File corruption? Reboot needed?... Temporarily out of ideas...

I think You may need Old-Polack..

Andy

[j-retired]

Thanks for all your ideas. I think when I've a bit time I'll re-install TB3 on another machine, load tha backup & see what happens!

Regards,
j

[drrdf]

I have problems with TB3 also. It seems that the earlier TB was more stable. TB3 seems to be conceived for those with one e-mail account only? If you have many accounts as I do it cannot cope adequately, and you get many problems. It seems to try to make separate folders for each account you have and then gets confused and muddles them, finally deciding that some or all of them do not exist, although as you have discovered they are in reality all there!

I suggest from my experience that your best bet is to back up your e-mail files, delete and then re-install TB. Then import the e-mail files into Thunderbird again. That is what I have to do continuously with TB3 in PCLinux to restore it to run. There seem to be some bugs in TB3?

I have also asked if there are any experts who can give any help with these problems on this forum, but so far there do not seem to be any, or they are too busy to respond.

[fraxinus]

TB3 seems to be conceived for those with one e-mail account only? If you have many accounts as I do it cannot cope adequately, and you get many problems.

Just to say that whatever is causing the original poster's TB3 issue, I somewhat doubt that it is the use of multiple accounts in itself.

It's taken me a while to get used to TB3. I have had strange problems with importing address books and with controlling the auto-complete function when typing email addresses. Also, I suffered great inconvenience back in December when it first 'arrived' on my desktop during the course of a routine system upgrade and I found that the Lightning calendar extension, which I depend on, simply did not work with TB3 at that time (this latter problem now remedied!). However, I do use multiple accounts on my install and have had no problems there.

Good luck with exploring the problem further, and perhaps a TBird expert will join this thread soon.