Last Friday during an auto update Thunderbird deleted all messages, from computer and my email server; why?
See title, all messages older than two months are gone forever. A few days later, all recent messages were deleted from my computer. When I mark messages on email server as unread, Thunderbird will not down load these. Thunderbird does download new external mail, but not last months, even when they have been marked unread.
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http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disappearing_mail
To me it sounds like your your mail file(s) got corrupted. First of all create a backup of your Thunderbird profile folder. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-tb#w_backing-up-a-profile
If you do have a backup created prior to the problem use it to restore your messages.
Otherwise you can try to rebuild the index file of the troubled folder. Right-click the folder - Properties - Repair Folder But I somehow doubt that this will bring back your messages.
Note: depending on the corruption this may erase messages from the affected folder which cannot be recovered anymore. In that case you'd need to restore them from a recent backup done prior to the corruption.
Corruption is often caused by anti-virus software messing with Thunderbird mail files. It is therefore recommended to create an exception for the Thunderbird profile folder, so that the real-time scanner won't attempt to scan the profile with your mail.
For more information on the profile location see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
Also see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_-_Thunderbird