Thunderbird States "The body of the message has not been downloaded..." when the email actually exists in the profile
I am trying look at an old profile which I had backed up a year ago by copying .../Roaming/Thunderbird folder (Currently using Thunderbird 31 on Windows 10). With a number of emails Thunderbird complains
"The body of this message has not been downloaded from the server for reading offline. To read this message, you must reconnect to the network, choose Offline from the File menu and then select Work Online.In the future, you can select which messages or folders to read offline. To do this, choose Offline from the file menu and then select Synchronize. You can adjust the Disk Space preference to prevent the downloading of large messages."
When I dig into the profile and look at the extensionless file corresponding to the mail folder and perform a text search, most of such mails are still to be found. And yet Thunderbird does not know they exist offline. This is especially problematic since the account has since ceased to exist.
I have looked online quite a bit for solutions but nothing has worked for me so far. What I have tried already: 1. Repairing the folder - deletes all the headers in the folder. 2. Compacting the emails - no effect 3. Deleting the msf file. New msf is not created on Thunderbird restart.
Please Help... Thanks!
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Re: When I dig into the profile and look at the extensionless file corresponding to the mail folder and perform a text search, most of such mails are still to be found. And yet Thunderbird does not know they exist offline. This is especially problematic since the account has since ceased to exist.
Sounds like this was an imap mail account folder which would need to synch with server (as that is where the emails were stored) preparing them for offline use. IMAP account emails cannot normally be read without connection to server or they need to be prepared for offline viewing.
Ideally, before closing the account, you should have synched for offline use to get a copy into Thunderbird and then copied the emails into Local Folders which would applied the relevant Mozilla headers. Then deleted the imap mail account. A bit late now - but useful to remember for the future.
suggestion: Print a hard copy of the file or open the file in any text editor. eg: notepad, wordpad.
I'll ask around to see if anyone knows something else.
@Toad-Hall Thanks for your answer. It is indeed an IMAP account and sync for offline use was enabled (What I did not do was to enable it for all folders but for the folders I explicitly opened should be synchronized irrespective). Based on your answer, I am now starting to believe this is a design issue with Thunderbird. Assuming your solution is the best possible, I am saddened by it for two reasons.
1) The e-mails have obviously been downloaded - it should be a simple matter for Thunderbird to display them. In case Thunderbird thinks the synchronization is not perfect, it should still display the last available information rather than saying that the mails are missing. 2) I can read the text emails in the editor but then the binary attachments are strings in the file.
I'd really appreciate if you could find something more useful... Thanks
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The import export tools will be your answer I think. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
Create a new profile that does not have any of the old profile in to. install the add-on Select the local folders, point the importexport tools at the old account with the mail stored in it and import. This should import the mail and in the process break the server link by placing it into a local folder.