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On Thunderbird 68 on Windows 10, some messages are missing from certain folders, but can be seen and read in global search

  • 1 reply
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  • Last reply by sfhowes

jeff63
jeff63
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I have a number of local folders that show a large gap in the dates of emails that correspond with messages that used to be visible there, but no longer appear. I have rebuilt the indexes (.msf) by right clicking on those folders in TB, but the messages fail to reappear. When I look at the content of the mbox files that correspond with those folders, those messages are not found.

But what is weird is that, if I search for one of these missing emails using global search, it appears in the search results and the full content of the message can be read. This is despite having just deleted the global-messages-db.sqlite file and had it rebuilt by TB. and BTW, when I monitored that rebuild process via the Activity Manager, I could see that it was indexing a larger number of messages than what currently shows up in those folders.

So the question is, where could Search be finding these messages if they are not contained in the mbox files? And how might I recover them?

One thing that comes to mind is that perhaps they are located in cache, but I would not expect search to look there.

Any ideas?

Thanks

I have a number of local folders that show a large gap in the dates of emails that correspond with messages that used to be visible there, but no longer appear. I have rebuilt the indexes (.msf) by right clicking on those folders in TB, but the messages fail to reappear. When I look at the content of the mbox files that correspond with those folders, those messages are not found. But what is weird is that, if I search for one of these missing emails using global search, it appears in the search results and the full content of the message can be read. This is despite having just deleted the global-messages-db.sqlite file and had it rebuilt by TB. and BTW, when I monitored that rebuild process via the Activity Manager, I could see that it was indexing a larger number of messages than what currently shows up in those folders. So the question is, where could Search be finding these messages if they are not contained in the mbox files? And how might I recover them? One thing that comes to mind is that perhaps they are located in cache, but I would not expect search to look there. Any ideas? Thanks

All Replies (1)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
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When you produce the results of global search, click 'Open email as list' to show the results in a new tab, then enable the Account and Location columns.