in the help menu select troubleshooting. Select the show profile button. Close Thunderbird. Delete everything in the folder that opened including sub folders. Replace that with the same files from your mozbackup (change the file extension to Zip and treat it as a zip file.) Start Thunderbird.

Now you should have all the correct files in the correct place so everything should be back.

Oh, my god! You are a genius!!! I would have NEVER thought to do that and it worked! Not only are my message filters back but my archived messages. Ta da!!!!! :) Thanks so much for the quick reply!

Aw, crap. Must have picked the wrong file and restored it from April. That means I lost whatever I've saved from then until today. Hate to try to redo it, though, in case it messes it all up again. Also, I now have a different profile for that email account than the other three I have. This one is a Roadrunner account. Two others are Gmail, which are working fine. The fourth is an IMAP, which won't let me send emails from. :(

Matt, a quick question. Performed a compact on my archived folders and lost those and all my message filters again. Am I NOT supposed to compact archived folders? Is it SUPPOSED to delete everything when you do?

Archive folders are just another folder. Nothing special about them at all.

Compacting should delete nothing. It often shows pre-exisiting data loss. When say an anti virus program deleted the entire folder because it thinks it has found a bug, the messages continue to display in the list because the index used has not been updated and the compact causes such an update.

Another thing that can happen is the compact does not complete. Right click the folder, select properties and then repair to force rebuilding of the index.

It is my belief that this also is a byproduct of anti virus activity. Thunderbird does not build a new index to the folder because the mail store is not available, the anti virus program has it locked while this new file is scanned. The lack of user feedback is a problem.

I figured out that my one mail account was pathed to the wrong profile. I fixed that and got back my 2014 and 2015 archives but don't have prior to 2014. I did the "repair folder," but it didn't do anything to bring back the missing files or folders. Is there somewhere I can look in my profiles of my backups to find the missing archives messages and just copy and paste them over?