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TB stopped retrieving new messages and trying to "reconfigure" my account to fix the problem, now I lost my old messages.

  • 5 replies
  • 4 have this problem
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  • Last reply by rorscan

rorscan
rorscan
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[4/15/14 edit #3] I posted the requested troubleshooting information and made a backup of Profiles using MozBackup, so my remaining problem is the presence of two Inboxes, both receiving messages, and my not being sure which one can safely be deleted nor how to safely delete it. [4/14/14 edit #2] T'bird's Help taught me where my "Profiles" are stored but I found I had no backup of them. However, I now discover that I have TWO Inboxes - hadn't noticed that quirk before. Thankfully, one of them still contains all of my old messages! The Inbox that still has all of my old mail is listed as a subfolder under "Local Folders" and the Inbox that I thought was my only Inbox is listed as a subfolder under the top folder whose name is my email address. Both Inboxes are now retrieving my new mail. Does this mean I have somehow created two accounts? If so, how do I get rid of the account that uses the Inbox that does not have all my old mail in it? I don't want to get rid of the wrong account but I suspect the "right" one should be listed under my email address, not under "Local Folders". If anyone understands this mess that I've created, I'd really appreciate some advice so I don't make things worse. At least I've now learned what it is that I need to back up. .......................... [4/14/14 edit #1] Following is a major update of the problem I described before (see below). I disabled the Mail Shield portion of my Free Avast antivirus software and discovered that TB was again able to retrieve my email. Then I re-enabled Avast to see if it blocked TB again. It did not. So, apparently simply turning Avast's Mail Shield off and then back on again seems to have fixed the problem. However, I'm now left with the consequences of my having tried to "reset" TB as I described below, namely the loss of a very large number of emails that were stored in my Inbox. So the remaining problem I'd like help with is how to recover those seemingly lost emails. If they remain on my hard drive, where did TB store them and what specific files should I look for? I do have a backup of some of my hard drive (but nothing under Program Files), but I need to know how to identify them, where to look, and how to get them back into my Inbox without deleting its current contents. I'd really like to also retain their original dates, if possible. I'm running 64-bit Windows 8.1. [end of 4/14/14 edit]

................................................ TB suddenly stopped downloading my mail today. After I click Get Mail, I can see at the bottom of the screen a very rapid succession of messages; first the "connected..." message, then "checking...", then "downloading 1 of 10...", then finally, "No messages to download" after downloading absolutely none of them. I also noticed that my list of mailboxes was missing the very first entry that showed my email address as the account name. Figuring something major must have been changed in my account configuration, I went through all the settings but saw no problems. Finally, I decided to try to re-establish my same account. That did place my email address again back at the top of the mailbox listings as my working account name but it also created a worse problem. There were now no messages in my inbox, I suppose because I must have created a new account using the same name as the old one, whereas before there were thousands of messages that I had saved for many years (since this is a business). Then when I clicked Get Mail, TB downloaded 383 messages that had not yet been deleted from the server, giving then all today's date (another loss since their original dates were important). But after it finished downloading all of them, clicking Get Mail still does not retrieve any messages past the time that it stopped retrieving them earlier today. Those newest messages remain on the server - but now there are 14 of them instead of 10. The same succession of TB messages appears at the bottom of the screen, but now it says "Downloading 1 of 14..." but still downloads none of them and ends with, "No messages to download". This sequence of messages will repeat as often as I try to retrieve mail but it can still count how many it is NOT downloading. Two questions: (1) Are the thousands of messages that were stored in my Inbox still stored somewhere on my computer and is there any way to recover them? (2) How can I get TB to start retrieving my current email again? I guess it's obvious that these are important problems to me and that I'm totally stumped. Many thanks in advance.

[4/15/14 edit #3] I posted the requested troubleshooting information and made a backup of Profiles using MozBackup, so my remaining problem is the presence of two Inboxes, both receiving messages, and my not being sure which one can safely be deleted nor how to safely delete it. [4/14/14 edit #2] T'bird's Help taught me where my "Profiles" are stored but I found I had no backup of them. However, I now discover that I have TWO Inboxes - hadn't noticed that quirk before. Thankfully, one of them still contains all of my old messages! The Inbox that still has all of my old mail is listed as a subfolder under "Local Folders" and the Inbox that I thought was my only Inbox is listed as a subfolder under the top folder whose name is my email address. Both Inboxes are now retrieving my new mail. Does this mean I have somehow created two accounts? If so, how do I get rid of the account that uses the Inbox that does not have all my old mail in it? I don't want to get rid of the wrong account but I suspect the "right" one should be listed under my email address, not under "Local Folders". If anyone understands this mess that I've created, I'd really appreciate some advice so I don't make things worse. At least I've now learned what it is that I need to back up. .......................... [4/14/14 edit #1] Following is a major update of the problem I described before (see below). I disabled the Mail Shield portion of my Free Avast antivirus software and discovered that TB was again able to retrieve my email. Then I re-enabled Avast to see if it blocked TB again. It did not. So, apparently simply turning Avast's Mail Shield off and then back on again seems to have fixed the problem. However, I'm now left with the consequences of my having tried to "reset" TB as I described below, namely the loss of a very large number of emails that were stored in my Inbox. So the remaining problem I'd like help with is how to recover those seemingly lost emails. If they remain on my hard drive, where did TB store them and what specific files should I look for? I do have a backup of some of my hard drive (but nothing under Program Files), but I need to know how to identify them, where to look, and how to get them back into my Inbox without deleting its current contents. I'd really like to also retain their original dates, if possible. I'm running 64-bit Windows 8.1. [end of 4/14/14 edit] ................................................ TB suddenly stopped downloading my mail today. After I click Get Mail, I can see at the bottom of the screen a very rapid succession of messages; first the "connected..." message, then "checking...", then "downloading 1 of 10...", then finally, "No messages to download" after downloading absolutely none of them. I also noticed that my list of mailboxes was missing the very first entry that showed my email address as the account name. Figuring something major must have been changed in my account configuration, I went through all the settings but saw no problems. Finally, I decided to try to re-establish my same account. That did place my email address again back at the top of the mailbox listings as my working account name but it also created a worse problem. There were now no messages in my inbox, I suppose because I must have created a new account using the same name as the old one, whereas before there were thousands of messages that I had saved for many years (since this is a business). Then when I clicked Get Mail, TB downloaded 383 messages that had not yet been deleted from the server, giving then all today's date (another loss since their original dates were important). But after it finished downloading all of them, clicking Get Mail still does not retrieve any messages past the time that it stopped retrieving them earlier today. Those newest messages remain on the server - but now there are 14 of them instead of 10. The same succession of TB messages appears at the bottom of the screen, but now it says "Downloading 1 of 14..." but still downloads none of them and ends with, "No messages to download". This sequence of messages will repeat as often as I try to retrieve mail but it can still count how many it is NOT downloading. Two questions: (1) Are the thousands of messages that were stored in my Inbox still stored somewhere on my computer and is there any way to recover them? (2) How can I get TB to start retrieving my current email again? I guess it's obvious that these are important problems to me and that I'm totally stumped. Many thanks in advance.

Modified by rorscan

Chosen solution

I have managed to recreate the same issue.

This is what I think has occurred.

The account which is putting emails in Local Folders is set up as a Global Inbox account.

The account which has it's own mail account Inbox is a standard mail account.

When you created the global Inbox account, you did not restart Thunderbird before downloading, so the same email will be downloaded into both accounts.

Any emails currently in the global Inbox - Local folders Inbox will not be deleted if you remove the account. but do not do this just yet.

Please look in 'Tools' > 'Account Settings' Can you see two mail accounts with the same name using same email address? I notice that you have account 2 and account 5 using different servers but maybe the same email address?

Select the 'Server Settings' for account 2 and click on the 'Advanced' button. A small window opens, what is selected?

  • 'Inbox for this servers account'

or

  • 'Inbox for different account' and 'Local folders'

Please also check account 5.

One of these accounts will say 'Inbox for different account' and 'Local folders'. This is the account which is putting emails in Local Folders Inbox and is set up as a Global account.

Tell me which account is set up as Global Inbox.


Also, I notice that account 2 has more than one identity. Do you have two different email addresses which go to the same account?

  • In 'Tools' > 'Account Settings' for account 2
  • click on 'Manage Identities' button.

If you have two different email addresses and you want emails from both to go into that mail account, then leave alone. click on 'Close'

If both identities have the same (identical) email address, then you do not need two, so you can delete the second one. select the second identity email address and click on 'delete'. then click on close......If unsure leave alone, but tell me what you have.

click on OK

Tell me what you have and whether you had two identical email addresses as identities for that mail account and also if you removed the second identical email address.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (5)

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
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please post info as described here:

paste info into this question, Edit/remove all info on fonts and printers but do not edit anything else.

rorscan
rorscan Question owner
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Sorry. Here is the Troubleshooting Info: 

 Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 24.4.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.4.0
   Profile Folder: C:\Users\Phil\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\p8gz2q23.default
             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20140316131045
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Crash Reports: about:crashes
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, Local Folders, (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, rorscan@sbcglobal.net, (pop3) pop.att.yahoo.com:995, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: smtp.att.yahoo.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true
     OUTGOING: smtp.att.yahoo.com:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, false

   account5:
     INCOMING: account5, rorscan@sbcglobal.net, (pop3) inbound.att.net:995, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: outbound.att.net:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

 Extensions
   Check for Updates in Help Menu, 1.1, true, helpupdate@dagger2-addons.mozilla.org
   CompactHeader, 2.0.8, true, {58D4392A-842E-11DE-B51A-C7B855D89593}
   Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate), 0.3.9, true, {a300a000-5e21-4ee0-a115-9ec8f4eaa92b}
   ViewAbout, 2.0.1, true, viewabout@rumblingedge.com
   Extra Folder Columns, 1.1.5, false, extra-cols@jminta_gmail.com

 Important Modified Preferences

   Name: Value

     accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0
     browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
     extensions.lastAppVersion: 24.4.0
     mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
     mail.winsearch.firstRunDone: true
     mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: 9bbfa749-eb91-4c2e-9a9a-d0e0146e393
     network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
     places.database.lastMaintenance: 1397067237
     places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 52770
     places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size: 85415034
     plugin.importedState: true
     privacy.donottrackheader.enabled: true

 Graphics

     Adapter Description: Intel(R) G45/G43 Express Chipset (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1)
     Vendor ID: 0x8086
     Device ID: 0x2e22
     Adapter RAM: Unknown
     Adapter Drivers: igdumd64 igd10umd64 igdumd32 igd10umd32
     Driver Version: 8.15.10.2702
     Driver Date: 3-11-2013
     Direct2D Enabled: false
     DirectWrite Enabled: false (6.3.9600.16384)
     ClearType Parameters: Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: RGB ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 100
     WebGL Renderer: false
     GPU Accelerated Windows: 0

     AzureCanvasBackend: skia
     AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
     AzureContentBackend: none

 JavaScript

 Incremental GC: 1

 Accessibility

   Activated: 0
   Prevent Accessibility: 0

 Library Versions

     Expected minimum version
     Version in use

     NSPR
     4.10.2
     4.10.2

     NSS
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS Util
     3.15.4
     3.15.4

     NSS SSL
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS S/MIME
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

ISP is AT&T, anti-virus is (free) Avast, Windows firewall

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Chosen Solution

I have managed to recreate the same issue.

This is what I think has occurred.

The account which is putting emails in Local Folders is set up as a Global Inbox account.

The account which has it's own mail account Inbox is a standard mail account.

When you created the global Inbox account, you did not restart Thunderbird before downloading, so the same email will be downloaded into both accounts.

Any emails currently in the global Inbox - Local folders Inbox will not be deleted if you remove the account. but do not do this just yet.

Please look in 'Tools' > 'Account Settings' Can you see two mail accounts with the same name using same email address? I notice that you have account 2 and account 5 using different servers but maybe the same email address?

Select the 'Server Settings' for account 2 and click on the 'Advanced' button. A small window opens, what is selected?

  • 'Inbox for this servers account'

or

  • 'Inbox for different account' and 'Local folders'

Please also check account 5.

One of these accounts will say 'Inbox for different account' and 'Local folders'. This is the account which is putting emails in Local Folders Inbox and is set up as a Global account.

Tell me which account is set up as Global Inbox.


Also, I notice that account 2 has more than one identity. Do you have two different email addresses which go to the same account?

  • In 'Tools' > 'Account Settings' for account 2
  • click on 'Manage Identities' button.

If you have two different email addresses and you want emails from both to go into that mail account, then leave alone. click on 'Close'

If both identities have the same (identical) email address, then you do not need two, so you can delete the second one. select the second identity email address and click on 'delete'. then click on close......If unsure leave alone, but tell me what you have.

click on OK

Tell me what you have and whether you had two identical email addresses as identities for that mail account and also if you removed the second identical email address.

Modified by Toad-Hall

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Account 2 has more than one identity.

Is one of those 'identities' the same email address as Account 5 ?

Can you tell me why you are using two servers? Is one the older server which is still running but the yahoo one is the new server being used by att. One is a att.yahoo server and the other inbound/outbound att server.

rorscan
rorscan Question owner
more options

It took me a long time to get back to this problem, but when I did, your pointing out that I had two identities enlightened me. I wasn't sure which one I was actually using but by renaming one of them, I saw which it was. Then I removed the redundant identity - and problem solved! I might have been using both because when AT&T required a setting change, I added the new settings but didn't delete the old ones (which continued to work anyway). Maybe I should have just modified the old settings - or maybe I did it in some other manner - I'm not sure how I created the mess - just glad you jumped in to help.

Many thanks for your most generous help :-)