Sorry to hear you had trouble.

Hopefully you tried https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-mode-thunderbird?

Also screen shots tend to be helpful - it's hard to tell from your description whether you mean subject from the message list, or subject in the message header immediately above the message body.

The body of message was blank after update.

I had problems with earlier versions, but I upgraded to TB 102.1.2 yesterday with only minor problems. I believe the major issues are fixed. You might check any plugins you have to make sure they are compatible with TB 102.*. That has been an issue for several people. I had to go through all the account settings after the upgrade and make sure they had not changed (a few, such as where to store my sent mails, had changed). I also checked and updated the settings on all my plugins - a few had changed. One of my IMAP accounts did not work correctly right after the upgrade, but it was fixed by closing TB and reopening it. Finally, you might try downloading the full install file from the website and installing that rather than doing the upgrade from inside TB.

Hi Mark:

Thanks for detailed reply. It sounds as if the update from with Tbird is dodgy. I downloaded full install but how does on install it: over current Tbird install or after first uninstalling current Tbird?

 Thanks, CMA

You can just install the full install file over your current installation. It will make the upgrades to the profile and the program code. Of course, make sure you have a backup first in case of trouble, which you seemed to have before. While this full install file might make a difference, I would look more closely at interactions with plugins. That is likely why Wayne suggested trying troubleshooting mode that disables plugins. Some plugins are known to cause issues because many must be changed to deal with the many new features of version 102.*. One of my plugins that was compatible did not work until I updated its settings. You could also try closing and restarting if you see issues before you abandon it.

I had serious problems earlier when I upgraded with an early version of 102. However, those problems seem to have been solved. My upgrade yesterday to 102.1.2 had only minor issues, but I did have to change a number of settings back to what they were and restart TB. That is why I would take some time to check account settings, perhaps repair folders, check plugins, and generally look for something in the setup that got changed in the upgrade and might be causing your problems. You could have some kind of a weird problem in your particular setup that has not been found to date, but, in general, the later versions have been working for those I noted had problems like mine before.

Thanks, Mark. I don't have any plugins (Add-ons). When I again tried update to ver. 102.2.0 , I had same problem: message bodies were empty. So I did a Win restore and got back ver. 91.12.0. Tbird now offered update to ver 91.13.0 which I did, no problem. But ver. 102.2.0 is defective, as least for some users like me. So I'll have to wait till Mozilla fixes the issue, if ever.

I can't guess any account settings that could be causing the issue.  As for Repair Folders, how and why would one do that. I don't see any Tool for that. In the past Compact Folders has wiped out folders.
I appreciate your assistance.

There are two ways to repair folders. From inside TB, right click on a folder name, and select Properties. There is an option there to repair folders. Select that and click OK. You can also go into the profile folder when TB is not running. Look in the Mail or ImapMail folder for your account. In the account folder there will be files with no extension like Inbox that hold your messages, along with index files named Inbox.msf, for example. You can delete the .msf files and restart TB. It will recreate those indexes on startup. There are settings under each account for synchronization that affect whether messages are stored locally and which ones to sync. You could make sure those settings make sense for you. Compacting folders is different. The early versions of TB 102 did have a problem with compacting, but that seems to have been fixed. If you never compact your folders, that might have some impact as there will be many deleted emails in the folders.

I am not an expert, so I don't have any other good suggestions. If you are still having issues, I suggest you provide as much information as you can about your specific configuration and perhaps screen shots from the profile folder directory listing so some TB experts can try to help see what about your configuration is causing the issues. If you just have one email account, or not too many emails, you could try creating a new profile and setting up your account again and let it sync up from the server. A fresh profile will almost always fix issues like you are having. You can select the 3 bar menu in the upper right corner, select help>more troubleshooting information. Look down at bit in the table that appears to about:profiles. Click on that. It will show any currently recognized profiles, and provide an option to create a new one.

Mark:

As usual good ideas from your thorough post. But I have no reason to think there's anything wrong with my folders. All Tbird updates for years have worked until this last one. So the problem is with ver. 102.2.02 Mozilla stated they would fix it but didn't say when.

The first thing to do when you have display issues is right click the folder, select properties and then the repair button. Clearly there is something wrong with your folders. You are not seeing any emails.

Hi Matt:

I followed your and Mark's instructions about repairing email folders. The problem seems to be for one folder, Inbox. After I update to ver. 102.2.0 then any emails in the Inbox folder, whether older or newly received after update to 102.2.0, show only the Header (Subject), but the body of the email is empty.

Is there a way to fix or clean the Inbox; or to save all folders (except Inbox); uninstall and reinstall a fresh Tbird and then use all the saved email folder (except Inbox)?

Thanks in advance to both of you for your assistance.

If possible, please avoid putting spaces at the beginning of paragraphs - it messes with the formatting. Thanks.

You can do the repair function just on Inbox. Just right click on Inbox, select properties, and use the repair folder option. If it seems unrepairable, you might try just creating a new profile under 102.2.0 and let all your emails sync back down from the server. If you don't have too many emails on the server, that is a pretty easy and fast process. By creating a new profile, the old one would still be there in case you need to get back to it. Just select the 3 bar menu in the upper right, select help>more troubleshooting information. Scan down a bit in the first table that appears to about:profiles and click on that. It will show your existing profile, but also give an option to create a new one. This will leave you where you started initially with TB. Just create your account again and subscribe to whatever folders you want. For IMAP, those folders will all populate from your server. This gives you a fresh profile that will get beyond any strange problems you might have. I have used that to clean up accounts that have a few hundred emails. If it looks good, you can go back and delete the old profile and move forward.

People have also done things like copy emails to local folders temporarily when they wanted to preserve them. You can then create a new account, and copy from the local folders back into an online account. However, I would probably try just recreating the whole account and see if everything will sync up from the server.

Hi Mark:

Thanks for the detailed suggestions. I don't have IMAP but have POP. 

I found the "Create New Profile." But then what do I do? I will have a new profile with Inbox and no other local folders. How do I get my old emails or folders (except the corrupted old Inbox) to the new profile. Since I don't have IMAP, there is no question of synching up with the server.

Thanks, CMA

If you are using POP, and not saving emails on the server, then you have fewer options. I guess I would first try to clean up your profile in the old 91.13.0 version. Make sure all trash is deleted and all folders are compacted. You might even try repairing folders there in case there is something wrong with the profile you are just not seeing. Once you have a good profile, you can try the update again. You stand the best chance of a successful upgrade if there are no problems in your profile before upgrading.

Another thing would be to do all the above. Then copy all your existing emails into local folders to preserve them. Then do the update. As soon as you do the update, delete the account and all of its data. Local folders will still be there. Then recreate that account again in the existing updated profile. You might use IMAP this time. Any emails that are left on the server would then be downloaded into the newly recreated account, along with any new emails. The new account should not be corrupted. Any of your old emails that are not downloaded can then be copied from the local folders back into the recreated account folders. You might lose a few that are downloaded between when you saved all your existing emails to local folders and when you got the new account created.

Sorry. That is more complicated. I am not an expert. I am just trying to suggest based on what I know. As always, make sure you have a backup you can go back to before trying anything like this. You could wait to see if the TB team finds additional issues in the new code that might cause your issues. However, it appears that you have some kind of pretty obscure problem that the developers will have trouble finding without getting a lot of debug information from you.

I went through all the folders and again did repair and also Compact. I also deleted any old, unnecessary folders. I then updated to version 102.2.0. Four emails were downloaded into Inbox. Headers but no body of email. I also sent myself an email with same problem. I got out of Tbird and back in. The bodies of all the 5 emails in Inbox were visible. I sent myself another email: no problem, body was visible. Dare I hope that your super smart advice solved the problem?

 But it looks good now. Thanks a million,
                CMA

I am glad this worked. I also had a problem with one account after the upgrade that was fixed by restarting TB. It seems like the version 102 profile updater sometimes misses some things, but they are fixed when TB is started again and does whatever it normally does to prepare folders when it starts up.

I've never had any problem with Thunderbird until today. Update 102 is a nightmare. I have multiple email accounts in Thunderbird and hundreds of saved important email in each account. Now I see only the Subject but nothing in the message field. This includes old saved messages as well as new ones just downloaded (all are through POP mail). Once downloaded they are no longer on my server so I have important info I cannot access at this time. Is there a way to downgrade back to the previous version? I've always taken all the updates with never a problem until today.

Matrix.wizarad, you did not provide enough information to give a good response. Did you update from 91 series of TB to a 102 series, or just from an earlier 102 series to a later one? It is the change to the 102 series that changes your profile. You will have a hard time going back to a version earlier than 102.0 unless you have a backup of the profile from the earlier versions. However, you can just downgrade to an earlier version of 102 by uninstalling and then installing the earlier version. While the early versions of 102 had a lot of issues similar to yours, they are much more rare with the latest versions, now 102.3.3. You should try the folder repair options mentioned earlier in this thread, and also compact files. Your emails are most likely still there in the profile.

I have always taken all the Thunderbird updates. Last night everything was a problem as I could not see anything in any message field - only the subjects. I installed an old Eudora email program to get mail in the meantime.

However this morning I did nothing different and did not see Thunderbird saying there was another update but now EVERYTHING is normal again and I can see all my messages. Did Thunderbird slip in an automatic update since last night? I would like to understand what happened to make sure it doesn't happen again as this could be a serious problem for the way I use email. Thanks for your suggestions but I did not try anything to correct the issue last night and am puzzled why it is fine now. I know ... don't look a gift horse in the mouth ;)

There is a new version of Thunderbird, but it would not have installed unless you have TB settings to automatically install updates. When you upgraded to version 102 from 91, the updater in the package made some changes in your profile to support new features in the new versions (102). I suspect there were some anomolies in your old profile that were not handled correctly by the upgrader. However, when you closed TB and then restarted later, TB made some checks on the profile as it always does on startup and then made some repairs for you. It checks, for example, for index files, and recreates them if they are missing or not recognized. There have been some previous examples where emails were not working fully after the upgrade, but the problem was corrected by the restart of TB. I am glad the combination of the upgrade and the TB startup corrections made you whole.

This experience suggests that your profile probably has some unused files and perhaps other internal folder configurations left over from prior versions that worked for you but did not follow the standards TB expects. If you understand how, you might review your profile and clean out any old files and folders that are no longer being used. I would not worry about it too much if you are not sure how to do that, as it appears TB was able to deal with your profile as it is, even if it needed a reboot to finish everything.