right click the folder and select properties and then the repair button to re-index your mail.

Hi Matt, thanks a million - did what you suggested and problem has disappeared. Appreciate your advice.

Matt said

right click the folder and select properties and then the repair button to re-index your mail.

I was trying to go back and catch up on reading my messages for the last few weeks and all my inbox messages (except for the very recent ones) would only display an empty body when I clicked on them. Messages in my other folders did not have this problem, only the inbox.

I did as you suggested to right click inbox, open properties, and click repair, and ALL my messages have disappeared except for today's! Really? That's a repair?!?

Much the same has just happened to me. First all the messages in my Inbox became blank when opened. I applied the repair suggested above. Now BOTH my Inbox and Trash are empty (have a file size of zero in Win Explorer). I didn't even run the 'repair' on my Trash, only on Inbox.

I don't recommend anyone to try this repair. If you think the index is corrupt, close TB and just delete inbox.msf using Win Explorer. A new index will be created when you restart TB.

ramasaig said

I don't recommend anyone to try this repair. If you think the index is corrupt, close TB and just delete inbox.msf using Win Explorer. A new index will be created when you restart TB.

I just had to point out that the repair rebuilds the MSF file. So your recommending people don't rebuild their index file, but they instead delete their index so it can be rebuilt. Perhaps that is why there is so much misinformation about email out there.

Obviously the repair is intended to do exactly the same as deleting the msf file would achieve. However, when I tried it I ended up with an empty Inbox as well. So too did a previous correspondent. So I advised caution based on my experience up to that point.

Further investigation has shown that the Inbox was possibly (I'd say almost certainly) already empty/corrupt.The msf file on its own will create a display of e-mail subject lines in the Inbox, but there is no content in the e-mails because the Inbox file is empty/corrupt. I know this because I have currently got exactly that situation in my Trash (or Deleted) folder. i.e the trash file is empty, but trash.msf is large, and I have a display of 'deleted' message subject lines in the Deleted folder, but no content in any of them.

Quite WHY the Inbox and Trash files got deleted remains a mystery. I can find no way to get them back, so will have to rely on back-ups.

ramasaig said

Quite WHY the Inbox and Trash files got deleted remains a mystery. I can find no way to get them back, so will have to rely on back-ups.

Got an anti virus which found things it did not like in your mail? That is the usual cause of the mbox file simply being empty. Nortons appears here in dispatches with regular monotony. What anti virus are you using?