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I dragged and dropped ca 600 messages from "Inbox" on the server to "inbox" local but all of them disappers, deleted on server inbox but never saved local!

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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

enrico.agliotti
enrico.agliotti
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Using Thunderbird version 60.9.0 on Debian 10.0.1 (stable), I tried to transfer 600 emails from folder "inbox" on the IMAP server to a local folder using multi selections and drag and drop and they completely disappeared.

The only 2 things I can remark are:

1) I named my local folder "INBOX" and Thunderbird rename it to "Inbox" but on the filesystem there are both: .thunderbird/ └── j58e4oyu.default 

   └── Mail
       └── Local Folders
           ├── Inbox
           └── INBOX

Probably was a bad idea use this name.

2) Tring to repair my local "Inbox" folder appeared an alert box saying someting like: "An other process is acting on this folder. Please wait until this process ended". Could be Thunderbird was trying to write there my messaes. After 1 hour, I tried to restart Thunderbird (probably an other bad idea) and this alert box disappeared.

Is there any chance to recover my 600 emails? If not, I'm very disappointed. This is a kind of error one can expect on version 0.1, not on 60.9.0! A mail client that loose mail is something that we can't heard.

Enrico

Using Thunderbird version 60.9.0 on Debian 10.0.1 (stable), I tried to transfer 600 emails from folder "inbox" on the IMAP server to a local folder using multi selections and drag and drop and they completely disappeared. The only 2 things I can remark are: 1) I named my local folder "INBOX" and Thunderbird rename it to "Inbox" but on the filesystem there are both: .thunderbird/ └── j58e4oyu.default └── Mail └── Local Folders ├── Inbox └── INBOX Probably was a bad idea use this name. 2) Tring to repair my local "Inbox" folder appeared an alert box saying someting like: "An other process is acting on this folder. Please wait until this process ended". Could be Thunderbird was trying to write there my messaes. After 1 hour, I tried to restart Thunderbird (probably an other bad idea) and this alert box disappeared. Is there any chance to recover my 600 emails? If not, I'm very disappointed. This is a kind of error one can expect on version 0.1, not on 60.9.0! A mail client that loose mail is something that we can't heard. Enrico

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Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
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When you 'move' emails from an Imap folder to a folder off the server eg: Local Folders' mail account and you are currently in 'online' mode, there is a load of communication going on between Thunderbird and server for each email. If communication is lost due to any timeouts by server it may cause a loss of email. If you have any Anti-Virus installed then everything will also be being scanned, so slowing down process.

Therefore, I always advise the following procedure when moving alot of emails. Synchronise all folders for offline use to download full copies of all emails into the subscribed folders. Then in 'offline' mode to prevent any synchronsing of folders whilst performing moves, select emails and use 'Copy to' and select relevant folder. This means if something goes wrong, you still have originals in the Imap folder and can try again. Once all emails are copied, check you can read them then you know you copied full downloads and not just headers. Then delete copied emails from imap folder and go back to 'online' mode so allowing the imap folder to synchronise with server and remove copied emails off server.

Imap accounts store all emails on server, so this is just one copy, hence why it is still advisable to synchronising/downloading full copies of emails to create mbox files and then exit Thunderbird and create a backup of the 'profile name' folder which contains all mail accounts, address books etc etc. This should be stored on an external drive of suitable size. Have you got a backup of your profile name folder ?