I am really so sorry T-H but I have really done everything you asked me to do' I renamed Inbox.sdb because 'Business' did not work. I have again renamed it Business.sdb and followed all instructions I have attached a screenshot of my Thunderbird menu now, which has progress as it shows my Folders, EXCEPT 'Customers' is not there and all of the folders are empty ?

I do apologise for the hassle !

I did that and when I restarted Thunderbird it did indeed have a 'Business' folder but what is in there is exactly the same as what is in the 'sent' folder at the top i.e. all emails sent up to 2014 ?

You used another mbox file - Sent-Copy to create the Business mbox file - so it will have a load of sent mail in it - just delete the emails in the Business folder and then compact the folder.

If you have done the previous comment and renamed that 'Inbox.sbd' folder back to a 'Business.sbd' folder then when you restarted Thunderbird, you should see subfolders in the Business folder.

Yes I now see subfolders, except 'customers', and all subfolders are empty

For information: in pop3.raysloan-9.com > Inbox - all subfolders are populated with email data

In 'Local Folders' > Business.sbd most of those same folders are empty, except 'customers'

Hi Toad-Hall

I have ALL of my files and folders back ! :-)

The key was realising that all files and subfolders in 'Local Folders' were empty whilst everything with the same names in pop3.raysloan-9.com > Inbox.sbd were full of data. I basically copied the lost data across to 'Local Folders'.

I guess this is the reason that in TB the folder names were there but they were all empty. The first folder I got back was my Client database - what a relief and moment of joy that was !

I cannot thank you enough Toad-Hall ! You have been so patient, tolerant, kind and generous. THANK YOU a thousand times !

My very best wishes to you

Ray

I was about to tell you to get copies of the mbox files into Local folders, but you have realised this was required. Good to hear all is now ok.