I deleted an email folder and can't figure out how to restore. There is no trash folder.
I deleted a folder from an imap account.
There is NO trash folder in Thunderbird for this imap account. (And, yes, I did subscribe to it but nothing happened.)
I'm not using "local folders". I download all the email so it ends up in \users\me\appdate\roaming\Thunderbird\profile\ImapMail\imap.mail.xxxxx.com
To make things easier to describe the problem, assume the folder is named "mystuff"
Before the deletion, I had a folder called mystuff with a subfolder mystuff-plus in the email system.
FIRST TRY: I didn't recreate the folder in the email system before restoring the folders from backup.
In the profile directory for imap.mail.xxxx.com there was mystuff.msf mystuff-1.msf
There were also two subfolders mystuff.sbd mystuff-1.sbd
I restored the two .msf files & the two.sbd files from backup. Went into Thunderbird & it immediately deleted all the files & the folder I had just restored. There was an error message, but it went by so fast I'm not sure what it said. Was it because there was no longer a "mystuff" folder in the email system?
SECOND TRY: I created a new "mystuff" folder for the email account in Thunderbird. Thunderbird created mystuff-2.msf and a new mystuff-2.sbd
When I open Thunderbird, I see the new "mystuff" folder but it is empty. I'm assuming it's because Thunderbird created a new folder. But I'm not sure where to go from here. Rename the folders? Restore the old folders than copy to the new folder?
I'm getting very confused. I do not quite understand the purpose of the .msf files and don't know how to fix things or what files I need to restore from my backups (I have a full backup & a differential backup).
Help please. This is an important folder with years of email.
All Replies (1)
re :I do not quite understand the purpose of the .msf files They are indexing files and do not store emails.
Check your backup to see if you have actually backed up full copies of emails.
mbox files are used when you download full emails (not headers). They have same name as folder name. They do not have any extension. They contain emails.
The *.sbd folders are created to hold subfolders which may contain mbox files and indexing .msf files.
Imap mail accounts store emails on server. You subscribe to see folders on server. Folders synchronise to show you a virtual copy of what is on server.
Check to see what you have on the server. Logon to to see your webmail account via a browser. Thunderbird can only subscribe and connect to folders that exist on server and show you what the server holds in those folders.
If you have mbox files containing emails in your backup: You could use 'ImportExportTools' addon to import those mbox files into the 'Local Folders' mail account (not the imap account). Make sure you really do have correct folders on server. Subscribe to see those folders. Then try using 'Copy' to put some emails from 'Local Folders' mail account back onto the server imap folders. Check the webmail account to see if they really are on server. If all is ok, then continue to copy small batches of emails back onto server.
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