Cannot see the text of an email sent to me? this only started happening after opening one email which I have now deleted
My emails worked fine until I opened an email from a colleague which looked fine... now any emails I had prior to opening this email are nolonger visible... that is I cannot read the text on the email. I have sent a test email and that works fine... can read the text. Everything prior to the email mentioned appears blank?
I have rebooted computer a couple of times to see if that would clear the issue.
All Replies (6)
It sounds like your mail files are corrupted.
First of all create a full backup of your Thunderbird profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Backing_Up_and_Restoring
Try to rebuild the index file of the troubled folder. Right-click the folder - Properties - Repair Folder
Note: depending on the corruption this may erase messages from the affected folder which cannot be recovered anymore. In that case you'd need to restore them from a recent backup.
Corruption is often caused by anti-virus software messing with Thunderbird mail files. It is therefore recommended to create an exception for the Thunderbird profile folder, so that the real-time scanner won't attempt to scan the profile with your mail.
For more information on the profile location see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
Just to keep informed: - OP posted a follow up issue:
Bryan, is your problem better after restarting Thunderbird?
I've had something like this happen.
The reboot and repair folder did nothing. Although I could still see the emails in the inbox I could not access them. The next day all of the messages which were there but not accessible had gone... I am not good at filing away messages so I lost quite a few emails. I have moved to a different email provider as I do not want the same issue to happen again. Fortunately all of my files have transferred over. Strange only message in the Inbox where effected.
Who was your mail provider? Did you change your mail address as well?
re: I have moved to a different email provider Do you mean a 'different email client' or 'different email provider'?
re :Although I could still see the emails in the inbox I could not access them. The next day all of the messages which were there but not accessible had gone
Just because an index file says there are emails does not necessarilly mean the emails were there. When you ran the Repair folder fix, what that does is fix the Index file so it shows what is actually in the Inbox file. It does not remove emails, they had already gone.
An Example of a possible reason for this: if an anti-virus product had found something dodgy then it could cause havoc on the Inbox by quarrentining/fixing it. Unfortunately, many AV products cannot understand that the Inbox mbox file contains several emails, so it cannot isolate the one dodgy mail thus it nukes the lot. But the anti-virus would not have known about the indexing file, so it would leave it be. Result - no emails, but the unaffected index would still think they were there as they had not been technically moved or deleted etc, so would show headers in the list of emails, but when you try to access the email, it cannot be located.
What can you do if this was the cause? Either do not allow AV product to scan any TB files and folders OR change instruction, if AV detects something then set it to ask what to do instead of auto fixing. Then you would have the opportunity to say leave it alone. So allowing you to export messages as individual .eml files to a folder on desktop and scan each separate .eml file to locate the problem one. Then delete that email and the one in TB. Then compact the folder to remove all traces of that email.
re :I am not good at filing away messages so I lost quite a few emails. that statement is a bit of a concern as it implies you have not been organising mail to keep Inbox low in numbers, nor possibly running regular backups nor archivingmail to reduce file size nor possibly compacting Junk and inbox on a regular basis to remove all traces of previously deleted mail.
Emails are written to mbox file, one after the other in the order downloaded. Think of it as a single document with a paragraph per email. Deleting marked a 'paragraph/email' as deleted and running compacting would search for those markers in order to remove that paragraph/email. Maintaining your folders would help to reduce risks.
Please read info on how to maintain a healthy thunderbird:
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_%28Thunderbird%29
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders
Did you create backups periodically ?