See me comments on the topic you hijacked.

Sorry Matt. I'm new here and panic'd a bit when I created a new id and it wanted confirmation on my email account .. which isn't working.

Anyway, to expand on this situation, I discovered how to start in safe mode but that didn't change anything. But by playing around, I discovered that I can see stuff in my sent or trash or any local folders .. just not in my inbox. And when I look at other folders, the spinning circle goes away. It comes back when I click on inbox or get messages so it's almost as if it's getting hung up talking to my ISP. And even though my cursor was a spinning circle, it still let me go to Help-About .. and was downloading 45.7 in the background which it has since installed; restarted; but still spinning when I try to see my inbox or get messages. Hopefully that helps. Tks for your assistance. ...Ian

Is this an IMAP account? What anti virus are you using.

If you right click the inbox folder, do you get a menu? If so select properties and then repair.

Perhaps your other comments were helpful... I just worked out this post was in the Firefox forum. If it had not been for them I would never have seen it.

Fixed now.

Matt said

Is this an IMAP account? What anti virus are you using. If you right click the inbox folder, do you get a menu? If so select properties and then repair.

Sorry for the delay. No, it is a POP account. I'm using Microsoft Security Essentials. Yes, I can right click on the Inbox folder and I get a menu. I select Properties and the Repair button turns blue when I mouse over it but when I click on it, nothing happens. Also nothing happens when I click on OK. Only Cancel works. So, I rebooted and tried again .. same results. When I open at my Thunderbird default folder, I'm noticing that the crashes, datareporting, and webapps folders all have timestamps of the last time I try to open the inbox. Does that tell you anything? Within datareporting, there is a file called aborted-session-ping which also has the same timestamp. I tried opening it via Notepad but it's unreadable to me.

Anyone have any ideas what the problem is or how to go about fixing it? I have been experimenting and discovered that I can create and send messages (which I can view on my phone) but still can't see my inbox on my PC. After sending a message, the aborted-session-ping file disappeared but after I try to get messages, it's back again. I'm on the latest version which I believe is 45.7 although since updating, I no longer have the Help tab.

It sounds like your Thunderbird Profile has been corrupted, or maybe just the Inbox. Your comment though about the Help not showing up in the Thunderbird menu may mean problems with the Thunderbird program also.

First things first to try to avoid lots of work, let's try deleting the index file for the Inbox and let Thunderbird re-create it.

If you could see "Help" in the Thunderbird menu (If you cannot see the Thunderbird menu, press the Alt key or F10 key on your keyboard to show the menu),

Then I would say:

Find & open your Thunderbird Profile folder: Thunderbird menu: Help: Troubleshooting Information (If you cannot see the Thunderbird menu, press the Alt key or F10 key on your keyboard to show the menu) Under "Application Basics", beside "Profile Folder", click the "Show Profile" button. This will open a Windows Explorer window showing the contents of your Thunderbird Profile folder.

If you cannot see or find the Help menu, then:

1. Quit Thunderbird.

2. Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and press the letter R on your keyboard. This will open a Run window.

3. Type into the run window:

%appdata%

Then press the enter key.

4. A Windows Explorer window will come up. Find the folder on the right side called "Thunderbird", and open it, then the folder called "Profiles".

5. There will probably be only one folder here that has a random name with .default on the end of the name (eg. xxxxxxxxx.default). Open it.

6. Open the folder called "Mail", then the folder with for your e-mail which will have a name like "pop.mail.yahoo.com", or whatever your e-mail server name is.

7. Find the file called "Inbox.msf" and delete it. It is just an index file. Leave the file called "Inbox" alone. It actually contains the e-mails in your "Inbox".

8. Start Thunderbird.

NOTE: You must delete that .msf file while Thunderbird is not running.

Does your Inbox work properly now?

Awesome!! Tks so much! The F10 restored the part of the bar so that Help was visible. Then I deleted the index file and restarted and things came up fine .. and the rest of the messages came in from my ISP. Everything looks fine now. I will mark this 'solved' if I can figure out how to do it. Tks again. ...Ian

Bruce A. Johnson said

Does your Inbox work properly now?

Bruce .. yes, thanks so much for your help. I did post separately and marked it solved but I thought that you might not see it unless I quoted you.

Once I post in a thread, I get notified of further posts in the thread. That is the default setting for the forum.