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Is there a way to recover messages after they've been moved from local folders to an IMAP account, which deleted them after they were moved?

  • 2 replies
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  • Last reply by Glamdring7

Glamdring7
Glamdring7
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I was trying to get Thunderbird to access my Hotmail account through IMAP instead of POP, so I moved all my messages from the account to "Local Folders", then I removed the POP account and created the new IMAP one. After that I started to move messages into the IMAP account, but I ran into some trouble when the server wouldn't want to accept all the messages I was uploading and it would stop.

So, I decided to move everything from "Local Folders" into the IMAP account while Thunderbird was offline, once it finished, I went online and instead of uploading the newly found messages in my IMAP account to the server, it decided to delete the messages. I guess because the actual online account contained no files so it wanted to synchronise and make my offline folder to also contain no files.

In short, never try this. It's a disaster. And, I know I should've made a back up prior to trying this, it's just that Thunderbird is usually very reliable, it never occurred to me. I still have the MBOX and MSF files, but even though they contain information, no extension can extract it.

Could anyone, please, help me out?

I was trying to get Thunderbird to access my Hotmail account through IMAP instead of POP, so I moved all my messages from the account to "Local Folders", then I removed the POP account and created the new IMAP one. After that I started to move messages into the IMAP account, but I ran into some trouble when the server wouldn't want to accept all the messages I was uploading and it would stop. So, I decided to move everything from "Local Folders" into the IMAP account while Thunderbird was offline, once it finished, I went online and instead of uploading the newly found messages in my IMAP account to the server, it decided to delete the messages. I guess because the actual online account contained no files so it wanted to synchronise and make my offline folder to also contain no files. In short, never try this. It's a disaster. And, I know I should've made a back up prior to trying this, it's just that Thunderbird is usually very reliable, it never occurred to me. I still have the MBOX and MSF files, but even though they contain information, no extension can extract it. Could anyone, please, help me out?

Chosen solution

https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/index-en.html#recDelMsg Try that add-on on the local folder the mail was in.

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Matt
Matt
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Chosen Solution

https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/index-en.html#recDelMsg Try that add-on on the local folder the mail was in.

Glamdring7
Glamdring7 Question owner
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Hi, I had tried using that very same extension right after messing things up, but it hadn't worked because I deleted the original folders as well.

Then I tried doing a System Restore (luckily, Windows had decided to do an automatic one the night before), but still the missing emails weren't showing.

A while after that I saw your suggestion and it hit me that I had not tried it after doing the System Restore, so I tried it and all messages were flooding back just like magic.

Thank you very much for your help! I'm very happy right now.