If they are important, I hope you have a backup. If you do, you may want to create a NEW profile and import everything into the NEW profile and see if everything is intact.

Before I do anything, I usually do a computer check-up. as well as scan with Malwarebytes and My Antivirus to be sure the systems in shape. If you want some step-by-steps on that I can post them in a follow-up.

I can also give a step-by-step to create a new Profile to import your backup or current one, just to see if that may help solve the issue or find the problem.

I backup daily rotating among four drives. I also have the paid version of BitDefender so I'm pretty confident there's no viruses or other malware. I have two different accounts, one for personal and one for business. I know how to create a new profile, but I never imported data. I see "Import from another Thunderbird installation" under the Tools menu, so I guess that's my next step? Just let me know if there's anything I need to watch out for. And thanks!

Just a comment on that: We routinely see backups done with proprietary software that don't work. That is, the backup was likely done while Thunderbird was running and the backup is generally corrupted. Yes, the menu option you mentioned is the one to use. I do recommend that, when doing backups, do so with TB is not active.

Thanks David. I always close all programs before backing up because many programs don't update their settings until you quit. So that's not an issue. I have a lot of saved folders, some with subfolders, so I'm not sure how that will all work. I'll try creating a new account for one of my emails and importing, and I'll report back here what happens. Thanks again.

If the backup is good, I recommend the import, as that will immediately restore your addressbook, accounts, and stored messages.

I'm having trouble with the import. I happened to have an extra existing email account on my server, so I created an account for that email with the name and password etc. But I don't see how to direct Import to import my files into this new account. I selected that account in both the "normal" view where you read emails, and also tried selecting it in the Accounts view while importing. After going through the import steps selecting a folder where my emails are stored, I got only an empty "Thunderbird Import" item in one of my other accounts. So:

How do I tell Thunderbird which account to import to? And how do I tell it to grab everything in the attached folder?

That is not the profile. I don't know how your backup works, but the initial profile would have been at c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles What you posted was a screenshot of one account, and accounts by themselves cannot be imported. Look back at what you were importing. That screenshot would have been from either a Mail or an Imapmail folder, and that folder would have been within the parent profile folder, which would also include your addressbook, (beginning with 'abook').

I keep my profiles (and all other "small data" like Word docs) in a separate partition. This way I can use an image backup program for Windows and programs on C:, separate from my data. I have other "large data" partitions for audio and video projects.

I've been trying to import from Thunderbird's own data files for one account onto this new account. As opposed to the same data from a separate backup location. Are you saying I should copy my current accounts to a new folder, then import from that folder?

My suggestion, since your backup is just one day old, is to restore the entire profile, which includes everything that you had yesterday: addressbooks, accounts, and messages. I do not understand why you just want one account. However, if you already have thunderbird working with an addressbook and some accounts and want to restore one more, then, assuming the account is POP, you could - add the account, but omit retrieving any messages. - exit thunderbird and copy the folders in your screenshot to overwrite the folders created when you recreated the account - restart thunderbird

But that's dicey. Doing a full profile restore is generally easier and safer.

I don't mind restoring everything for all accounts. So how exactly do I do a full profile restore?

Here's another thought, maybe even simpler: What if I copy all of my data to a new folder, maybe even on a separate drive for extra safety, then uninstall TBird. Then I'd delete all the current folders, install the current version of TBird, then import everything again? I'd do a full image backup of C: first just in case something goes awry, and also have a full backup of the current folders before I delete them. Would that be easier?

Thanks very much David for your continued help with this.

A full profile restore is simply tools>Import>import from another thunderbird installation. Nothing could be simpler. Maybe you're not aware of what a profile is? what is the name of the folder that contains the screenshot that you posted? Mail? Imapmail? Then find the name of the folder in which that folder resides. That would be the profile.

Part of the problem is my email accounts are scattered among several folders. It all used to work fine! So the scattering isn't the problem. I have emails going back at least 4-5 computers, and to when I had used Outlook Express. So over time things got transferred, or imported, and it all became more complicated than I'd like! Here's the current folder structure:

Thunderbird Data ... Ethan Winer ...... Trash.sbd [is empty] ...... 12 data files including .msf versions ... Outlook Express ...... 5 folders, some with subfolders, many files ... RealTraps ...... 4 folders, 7 files

RealTraps is my company, and those folders and files are empty because I told TBird to store that account's emails in with my main Ethan Winer account. This way I can see both Account's emails there without having to keep looking in two inboxes.

OK, what you are saying is that the configuration you were using in Thunderbird just a day or two ago is no longer relevant, that you want to restore to a different configuration than you had then. Since you prefer to just restore accounts, then I suggest you locate all the folders and, with Thunderbird not running, copy them into the Mail\Local Folders folder of the current profile. Then recreate each mail account that you had prior to the problem. That should ensure that no messages are lost, although they may be separate from the account with which they were attached.

The final question then is what files or folders do I actually select to import? Again, I have nested folders, for example under Saved I have about three dozen theft filers, one with yet another folder under that. Do I specify importing the Saved folder, and TBird will know to bring in everything within that folder including other folders within? Or do I create the new accounts, then import each item one by one?

Here are the steps: Run Mozilla Thunderbird, right-click on the Inbox folder, and select "Properties". Select "General Information" and check the folder name to be as "Inbox". Then click "Repair Folder" and click "OK" to finish the process. After this, you will be able to view the repaired data - emails, etc.

Regards, Diana

Diana, I had hoped that would fix the problem! But it didn't. It just trashed the folder with the problem. This isn't the Inbox, but a folder under my Saved folder. When I copied my backup files to the real folder I got it all back, but in the same damaged state.

I have a second computer. I wonder if I should install TBird there, and copy my files to the new install? Then I'd at least know if the problem is damaged data files or a damaged install on my main computer.

Here's some new information. I mentioned above one folder that has very old emails from around 2005. I found that folder's email files (one with no extension, one with .sbd) on an old backup and copied those over my current files. Yes, of course I closed TBird first. When I started TBird again all of the emails are there, with their attachments showing as a paper clip. BUT: As soon as I click an email to display it, the attachment goes away and the email displays the attachment as a huge string of data inline like this:

QAgAHAAYwBzAC4ACQA ...

This is the problem I reported initially in my first post. So that tells me the problem is TBird itself, not corrupted data files. Did TBird change the way emails are stored, such that it can't read emails from older versions and corrupts them when it tries to read them?

More news, this time good: Thanks to Diana for the tip to try Repair. On the OTHER folder where all of the emails display as zero bytes and show nothing, Repair did in fact fix the problem. All the email contents are back. Yay! So now I just need to figure out how to restore the old 2005 folder from my good backup such that TBird doesn't trash each email as I click to display them.

Sorry, one more: Before anyone spends more time thinking about my problem, I have one other thing I can try. The good backup I mentioned is on my previous computer, which is still set up but unused for exactly this sort of problem. That computer has an older version of TBird. So I'll export that folder as individual .eml files, then import those files into my current PC. Hopefully that will fix it! More soon. And thanks again to all for your help so far.

Just to let you know that exporting from my old computer, then importing (after installing the Import/Export plug-in) worked and fixed my problem. So thanks, folks, for all your help.