Hey there! I totally understand how important those emails are. It seems like during the transition from POP to IMAP, moving your emails didn't go as planned. While I'm not sure about your specific situation, it's possible that the dragging process might have caused some issues. However, don't worry just yet! Your emails might not be completely gone. One thing you could try is to check the "Local Folders" section in Thunderbird. Sometimes, when you drag emails around, they end up there. If you don't see them there either, it's worth checking if you have any backups, perhaps on an external drive or a cloud storage. In the future, to avoid such situations, it's a good practice to back up your important data regularly. If you're really stuck and can't find your emails, consider reaching out to Thunderbird experts for more specialized help.

Thanks. They weren't in the Local folders. Where could I find the Thunderbird experts?

Are my emails gone?

Yes, they are gone. With IMAP everything is managed on the server, and the client (Thunderbird) is just a mirror of what's on the server. The mistake you did was moving messages to the IMAP folder while Thunderbird was not running or offline. Upon re-starting Thunderbird the server erased those messages on the client it didn't know about.

There is no backup on this computer.

That's the second big mistake. Hopefully lessons learned.

They weren't in the Local folders.

Because you moved them to the IMAP folder. For these kind of transactions copying first, and deleting once copying is completed successfully is the safer way.

Thanks for your response.

But when I do a search for names in the old emails, the entire list shows up with the dates, email addresses, etc. Some of th e emails are accessible and some are not? Are they really gone? Some part of th em is still there.