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I accidentally deleted years(!) of emails. How to restore?

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  • Last reply by laurent11

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Hi,

So, I wanted to set up automatically removal of deleted messages that were older than 30 days in my Trash folder. So I went into my settings and set the account to delete messages that were older than 30 days... thinking it only affected the ones in the Trash.

OK, I can see you smiling and shaking your head. In my defense, I didn't sleep enough last night.

Anyway... I'm in the process of restoring my profiles from my backups (at least I didn't get that wrong!)

What is the best way for me to get back all of the deleted data without losing the messages I received since my last backup (about 20 hours ago).

My plan is this:

  • Restore yesterday's profile to a folder
  • Move or rename my current profile
  • Move the restored folder (with the correct name) into the location of the corrupted profile

My concern is that even if I do that, the IMAP data on the server is corrupt and will cause the messages to be deleted again. Is that the case? If so, is there a way for me to take the restored profile data and store the messages as local files? At least I won't have lost the data completely.

Thanks,

L

Hi, So, I wanted to set up automatically removal of deleted messages that were older than 30 days in my Trash folder. So I went into my settings and set the account to delete messages that were older than 30 days... thinking it only affected the ones in the Trash. OK, I can see you smiling and shaking your head. In my defense, I didn't sleep enough last night. Anyway... I'm in the process of restoring my profiles from my backups (at least I didn't get that wrong!) What is the best way for me to get back all of the deleted data without losing the messages I received since my last backup (about 20 hours ago). My plan is this: * Restore yesterday's profile to a folder * Move or rename my current profile * Move the restored folder (with the correct name) into the location of the corrupted profile My concern is that even if I do that, the IMAP data on the server is corrupt and will cause the messages to be deleted again. Is that the case? If so, is there a way for me to take the restored profile data and store the messages as local files? At least I won't have lost the data completely. Thanks, L

Chosen solution

OK, I was right about the IMAP server. So here is what I did:

  • Restore yesterday's profile to a folder from my daily backups (whew!)
  • Rename my current profile folder
  • Move the restored profile folder into the location of the corrupted profile
  • Go offline
  • Start Thunderbird
  • Copy all IMAP folders to Local Folders in TB
  • Go online
  • Let all folders sync
  • Move messages in Local Folder back to IMAP folders

I think I'm back to where I was before this mistake.

Hopefully it helps someone sometime in the future. Let me know!

L

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Chosen Solution

OK, I was right about the IMAP server. So here is what I did:

  • Restore yesterday's profile to a folder from my daily backups (whew!)
  • Rename my current profile folder
  • Move the restored profile folder into the location of the corrupted profile
  • Go offline
  • Start Thunderbird
  • Copy all IMAP folders to Local Folders in TB
  • Go online
  • Let all folders sync
  • Move messages in Local Folder back to IMAP folders

I think I'm back to where I was before this mistake.

Hopefully it helps someone sometime in the future. Let me know!

L