you need to check both your "Junk Settings" and "Global Junk Preferences" (a button for viewing G.J.P is located in the Junk Settings area)

what are your Junk Settings and Global Junk Preferences?

Settings displayed below: Thank you for the quick reply:

==

===

on the left side of thunderbird, way down at the bottom, is a section called "Local Folders"

Did you check the in junk folder under that?

I just looked at it now, and the "check box" which says "move junk messages to" is not checked (the rest is greyed out). What happens if this box is not checked and you accidentally mark something as junk? Is it gone forever? Thank you.

Without instructions to move junk mail, I would expect flagged junk mail to stay in place.

you can sort on the "Junk" status and check to see if it appears at the top or bottom of the sort.

Sorting on the "junk" status and looking for it that way was one of the earliest things I tried, and there are a group of about 7 old junk messages, but it was not among them.

To test what is happening right now I did the following: - made sure there was a check mark in each of the boxes which say "move junk messages to" (both the "local folders" one and the one under the email account name)

- closed and then re-opened Thunderbird Mail

- went to the inbox and selected and old email, clicked on the "junk" dot beside it... it vanished immediately.

- looked among the "junk" items in the inbox folder... it was not there

- looked in the "junk" folder... which is still empty

very puzzled

did you check the junk folder under "local Folders" ?

In the left-hand "tree" I can only see one junk folder. It is under "local folders" and is identified with an orange icon. Should there be another junk folder? Thanks

according to your first image, global junk preferences are to move them to the junk folder under "Local Folders"

the local folders is a grouping found on the left side of TB, and at the bottom, under all the email account heirarchies.

I think we are talking about the same location ?? I always have the folder called "local folders" expanded, because that's were my inbox is, it also has "drafts", "sent", "deleted", "archive", and "outbox" as well as the (empty) "junk" folder as well as a lot of folders I have created so sort and store emails. I might be missing something?

Well, if it is not in any of the other "junk" folders

and it is not in any inbox

and it is not in any trash folder

Then I can't explain where it is.

If you have not compressed any of the folders, it is theoretically possible to find it by opening the original folder with notepad and searching for it there.

If the file is in the hundreds of MB or into GB, this could be a daunting task.

You'd have to find it there and change the X-Mozilla-Status: to 0001

Hello "FrustratingProblem" I think I may have found the solution, and a possible glitch. Please take a look at the attached Word document which has some images in it. By right-clicking the "junk" folder, I found a tab marked "retention policy". I recorded how the retention policy was set up (on two different accounts). I selected and old email and by right clicking then selecting "move" I moved it to the "junk" folder, the one with the retention policy "keep for 2 days" selected. Then I looked in the folder, and lo and behold, that email was there. I went back to the inbox then back to the "junk" folder and the email was gone. Next, I selected another email, and instead of using the "move" function, I clicked on the "dot" beside the email in the junk column.. as before, it vanished, nowhere to be found. Then I went to the "retention policy" and changed it to "don't delete any messages". After that, I selected two other emails, one I "moved" to junk, the other I "clicked the dot". Both went to the junk folder and stayed there. Even when Thunderbird is closed and re-opened, they are still there. Please note that I have never intentionally changed retention settings before... didn't even know they were there. So the ones I had were likely the default ones. This seems to be a solution for me. I guess the original emails are gone forever. Deleting out of junk seems to completely delete emails rather than sending them to "deleted"... kind of makes sense. Don't understand why they weren't kept for 2 days, but that could be the glitch. Thank you again for your patience, and your help. Over and out.

Oops. Forgot the attachment. It doesn't seem to like a .docx file as an attachment.

Images finally attached... after converting Word to PDF then PDF to jpg  ??

if you have not compressed your folders, manually editing the original folder (not the msf file, but the other one) and looking for the mail, and changing the X-Mozilla-Status would be a last ditch effort to restore it.

I will give it a try, but it was much more important to be able to stop it from happening again in the future.

For me, the issue is resolved

Thank you again for all the help.