As you already had a pop mail account in Thunderbird, you already had those emails. You could have stopped that mail account from auto connecting to old server and checking for emails and left that pop mail account alone to display those emails, then created the new mail account to connect to different server. OR Copied all the emails from old pop mail account into your 'Local Folders' mail account to see emails and then deleted the old pop mail account.

When you removed the old pop mail account, it would not have been removed from the profile folders, so all should still be in the profile folder, just not currently visible. That is unless you actually accessed the profile folders and deliberately deleted them.

Suggest you import the mbox files from old pop mail account currently hidden in profile folders (or from the backup) and import them into 'Local Folders' mail account.

To do this use an addon extension called 'ImportExportTools' Download addon extension to computer from here:

• https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

How to install addon extension info:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

Right click on 'Local Folders' mail account and select : 'ImportExportTools' > 'Importmbox file' Select :Import directly one or more mbox files' click on 'OK' locate the profile name folder usually here:

• C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\

'profile name' folder by default is called 'xxxxxxxx.default' where the x's are letters and numbers. Click on 'Mail' folder click on the pop mail account name folder to see files and folders.

mbox files contain emails. mbox files do not have any extension. .msf files are just indexing files they do not contain emails. .sbd folders mean you have subfolders. These fodler may contain mbox files.

select the mbox files you want to import and click on 'open' mbox files will be imported and will show up under 'Local Folders' mail account.

The example images below will help to explain process

Thanks Toad-Hall.

I did all those steps several times. Unfortunately the only folder I can get in is Inbox. All my subfolders are showing but with .sbd extensions. When I click on those from the import/export tool, it just goes into the folder and all of those are empty. Since they are empty should I assume that the e-mails didn't get backed up?

re :All my subfolders are showing but with .sbd extensions.

You need to open the .sbd folder and inside there should be more mbox files

eg: C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\ Mail\pop mail account name\Inbox.sbd\mbox file location

So do not try to import the .sbd folder itself as it is not an mbox file.

Alternative: Right click on 'Local Folders' mail account and select :

'ImportExportTools' > 'Importmbox file' 

Select :'Import one or more mbox files, with it's/their subdirectory' click on 'OK'

then choose the mbox file that has a .sbd folder of same name. eg: C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\ Mail\pop mail account name select 'Inbox' This would then import the Inbox mbox file and also anything stored in the Inbox.sbd folder

Thanks again but I've done all those things.

The issue is that for example if I have a folder called "Advertising", I will have the folder Advertising.sbd but nothing else, no file called just Advertising. And then when I click on the folder Advertising.sbd, it's empty.

Maybe I did something wrong in the back up / import part of the equation. Though not sure why it would have the folders that existed but not the mbox.

See pics.

I see what you mean. The first image seems to show you only have one mbox file called 'Inbox'. I also notice you do not have mbox files for 'Sent', 'Archives', 'Junk', 'Drafts' nor 'Templates' which is also a bit odd.

What I would also have expected: In first image where you see 'Inbox' mbox file and 'Advertising.sbd' folder. There should also be 'Advertising', 'Beer &-Wine', 'Catering', 'Employees', Maintenance', 'Partners' mbox files.

eg: The 'Advertising.sbd' folder means it holds subfolders to the 'Advertising' mbox file. The 'Advertising' mbox file itself may or may not have emails, it depends on whether you used that name as a top level folder but did not actually store emails in it because they were sorted into subfolders under that folder name.

The question is.... Are the images from your backup of Thunderbird or are these images in your currently used profile folder ?

If they are images of backup, then please look in the currently used profile folder where the pop mail account was originally located.

These are images of my present profile AFTER I exported the back up in it. So unfortunately it doesn't look good.

Access the backup copy of profile and check to see if it all looks the same or whether there are additional files which are not seen in the currently used profile.

So that's what I ended up doing today. And I found out that some folders have the name with no type at the end (msf, sbd). And some don't. So I guess the back up worked for some folders and not for others. Thanks for your help. At least I was able to not start entirely from scratch.