I suggest you try disabling your anti virus program and then try moving messages. Most of these sorts of issues are directly caused by anti virus programs scanning the Thunderbird files while they are in use. We do recommend creating exclusions in anti virus products for the Thunderbird profile folders and to turn off email scanning in many cases.

But the cause specifically on your computer is something you need to determine. It works for most folks so it is something local to you that is causing issues.

There are 24 individual folders in local folders ALL under the same email address/account. There is no way to specify settings for individual folders. US Bank has all of the monthly messages from last year. T-Mobile has all of the messages from last year. Spectrum has all of the messages from last year. Duke Energy has all of the messages from last year. And on and on. But for my bank account, my tax records, my PayPal, and my life insurance NONE of the messages from last year are in Local Folders even though they were all supposedly saved in the exact same fashion with the exact same clicks/choices/whatever. It is an anomaly. It does not make sense. The most likely culprits to me are they were lost on update or some whacko has accessed my accounts and is being a prick. Any ideas?

re :There are 24 individual folders in local folders ALL under the same email address/account.

Can you clarify a few things, so I can understand your setup. Are you talking about a POP or IMAP mail account ? When you say '24 individual folders in local folders' , Do you mean the 'Local Folders' mail account ?

If you use POP mail account, does it have it's own mail account name and set of folders seen in Folder Pane ? OR is the pop mail account set up as a deferred account and uses a 'Global Inbox' eg: 'Local Folders' Inbox. So you only see a 'Local Folders' mail account?

I am running IMAP. When I first switched from POP to IMAP I realized that when I deleted a message to save space at the server it freaking disappeared on my computer. So I set up Local Folders in Tbird. Under Inbox in Local Folders there are two folders. One for my personal email account and one for my business email account. The personal folder has no sub-folders. The business has 24 sub-folders. Other than Tbird updates (I have no control other than refuse to update) I have not changed one setting in the 3 years I have been running Tbird. All messages from 2016-17 are in all folders. All messages from 2018 are in all folders except the most important ones. I have used the exact same process for moving the files from the IMAP inbox to the respective Local Folders inbox every freaking time. I honestly believe that it has more to do with the quality of Tbird than anything else.

PS-There is no way in Hell I would use software that required me to disable my virus protection in order for it to work properly. If that is the case I will find another email program.

re :PS-There is no way in Hell I would use software that required me to disable my virus protection in order for it to work properly.

Please note that should you decide to open an attachment then the AV would still run. Thunderbird by default does not automatically allow remote content to be displayed; you would have to allow it manually. It's not about 'in order to work properly', it is about AV products do not understand that a file can hold more then one email, so if you are allowing files to be auto scanned then I would recommend you do not allow an auto fix. Otherwise you run the risk of the AV product either completely deleting the file or perhaps causing it to be corrupted.

Then you can export the emails in the problem folder as .eml files to a folder you have created on the desktop. Then scan that folder and the problem .eml file will be picked up. You can then delete the problem email from Thunderbird and compact that folder. This will remove the problem email. then delete all the .eml files as they are not required any more.

Info on pros and cons of not allowing AV to scan emails or files that contain emails. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Email_scanning_-_pros_and_cons

I would always advise that you 'Copy' emails to 'Local Folders' then you can check that the full email was downloaded and copied correctly and not just copied a header by going into offline mode. If you can read emails in offline mode then you know you have a good copy and can then delete off server.

re:All messages from 2018 are in all folders except the most important ones. Are the 2018 important folders themselves still visible (just no emails) or is the actual folder also missing?

Please check your profile name folder to see what is available in the 'Local Folders' mail account. In Thunderbird

• Help > Troubleshooting Information
• click on 'Open folder' button

a new window opens showing the contents of your 'profile name' folder.

• click on 'Mail' folder
• click on 'Local Folders' mail account

mbox files hold emails; they do not have any extension. You can open an mbox file using a text editor like Notepad++. Files ending with extension .msf are only index files and do not contain emails.

any folder with extension .sbd indicates it contains subfolders which may contain more mbox files.

Assuming folder is visible but no emails in it. Locate the relevant file which is not showing emails in Thunderbird. Does it have a good file size ? Open the file and report back on whether you can see the missing emails.

I followed your instructions and opened the pertinent folders to find basically what I see otherwise. The folder shows the messages from 2016-17 but nothing from 2018. I only did this with one folder because the more I do this the angrier I become. The messages are gone as Thunderbird soon will be. Ever since I was stupid enough to download the last updates I have been having issues. If I have to copy to local folders, verify that the copy was successful, and then delete I am using the wrong Flintstones software.

Thanks for your time. I accept full responsibility for my ignorance in trusting the software.

re : copy to local folders, verify that the copy was successful, and then delete

I prefer to be certain about my emails before I delete them off server especially if I do not have any other copy at that point in time. Hence why I use 'copy' and not 'move'.

After all, you are talking about Imap mail accounts which do a load of synchronising jibber jabber with server everytime you want to move anything off server and you need to be certain that the full email really has been properly downloaded before deleting off server.

I also tend to copy a load in batches as it is much quicker, so prefer not to do this whilst a folder may synchronise with server. Hence, I do it in offline mode as this stops the synschronising and allows me to do random checks that full emails are copied successfully and not just headers. I also create backups, so I have more than just one single copy after all any computer OS or hardrive etc can die without warning or any AV product could mess up files or delete them.

So, I was offering some advise to check what is going on.

But in all honesty, if you have other software on your computer which you allow access to Thunderbird files and folders then you need to create backups on a regular basis anyway. Synchronised files will be being scanned frequently.

If you want to try any other email client then it is up to you, but you still need to create backups if you allow AV type products access to those files.

Do you have any backups as this could be used to import mail back into 'Local Folders' mail account?

WTFeatme said

PS-There is no way in Hell I would use software that required me to disable my virus protection in order for it to work properly. If that is the case I will find another email program.

Unfortunately anti virus products tend to be poorly written and in many cases little better than the products they purport to be protecting us from.

Most folks get regular issues from their anti virus programs, but they blame the software that the anti virus has crippled. Be that the email client, browser or office productivity tools. or the printer that just stops mid print for an age and starts up again. Here are a selection we have documented https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Antivirus_Related_Performance_Issues

Programs like mail clients are particularly susceptible to aggressive behavior of anti virus programs because they by default have large stores of mail to manage. There was a time they would ignore Thunderbird's mail store as it contained no executable components. But now they scan it when you access the folder, they scan it again when you get mail and again when you move it to another folder. The result is often that Thunderbird fails because of contention issues with it's own files. Regular appearances of odd folder names repeated downloading of all mail on the server in POP and the incomplete indexing of mail in folder are only some of the problems that they cause.

Allowing anti virus to automatically fix infections regularly leads to entire folders of mail simply being removed. Thunderbird stores all the mail for a folder in a single file. The MBOX Toad refered to. When your anti virus says I have found XXX in folder YYY and you say fix automatically, that automatic fix involves the removal of all your mail. Sometimes it will be "quarantined" and you can force the issue and get it "unquarantined" but that is the exception not the rule. It should be noted that Thunderbird stores mail in text format. So there is no way anything in an email can be executed from the store.

WTFeatme said

I followed your instructions and opened the pertinent folders to find basically what I see otherwise. The folder shows the messages from 2016-17 but nothing from 2018.

Usually there are two copies on mail in windows. One is visible in the mozmeg folder and will be the first 20KB of the email. This is what many people assume is their mail when they look in the profile folder as there are lots of files with names that sound right with a file extension of mozeml.

Toad has suggested editing the actual store Thunderbird uses. Can you confirm that you actually opened the MBOX file? Sorry to be a pain, but experience makes me wary. When folk see those file names they jump to it as a result.

While you are looking in files go to the imap mail (not mail) folder and drill down until you find the inbox file for the relevant IMAP account. Open it as suggested by Toad for your local folders. It may be that the file has not been compacted and deleted messages are still there. It may also not be the case, but it is important to be thorough.

I only did this with one folder because the more I do this the angrier I become. The messages are gone as Thunderbird soon will be.

I understand loss of data is distressing. I have been in the situation and had the hard disk crash with my information for a court case in the days before the hearing. Speaking from experience anger and despair are non productive in this situation.

Ever since I was stupid enough to download the last updates I have been having issues.

What sort of issues? This might actually be relevant. Despite almost all post update problems coming from add-ons and external sources. There are a few that are genuine bugs that need to be fixed.

If I have to copy to local folders, verify that the copy was successful, and then delete I am using the wrong Flintstones software.

Personally I think you are using the wrong protocol to get your mail and using Freds chop bone to bash the mail into something you like.

POP downloads all mail from the inbox to the local folders. done deal. IMAP offer nice management of folders and synchronization, but you are wanting permanent local storage.

There is nothing to stop you using both. One account as pop in Thunderbird that downloads all mail and files it in local storage, and an imap one that you can use how you like.

I would suggest using the POP account to remove mail from the server when it gets mail and NOT storing a password for it, that way you will have to click cancel when you start each time on the password prompt, but you will only have the mail removed when you enter the password.

Regardless, all email clients will be using the same IMAP protocol and the same communication with the server which is a text based conversation.

It is as low level as copy message id XXXXX to folder XXXXXXX and delete messageid XXXXXX each message treated as a single transaction. SO actions against 500 emails might generate many times that in individual messages back and forth to the server. It is slow and ugly. It is also prone to error as the numbers of messages increases. The application has to keep track of which requests have been issued and which have returned.

I wish you well in your search for a new mail client. I have been around them for some 25 years. I doubt you will find one that is netter all over. each appears to have it's own strengths, but they all appear to have weaknesses. Loss of data and file corruption appears to be common to them all. I would venture to say the root cause is also common to them all. I do not see Linux users with data loss issues in any where the numbers (relative to user umbers) as I do windows. It used to be the same for OSX users, but as they increasingly install these so called security suites they are more and more appearing with strange data loss issues and inexplicable connectivity problems.

Sorry it has taken so long to get back but I don't have the time or inclination to dedicate the rest of my life to malfunctioning software. When I last updated Tbird the first time I tried to access my email I was prompted to enter the passwords for the accounts. I have 8 different accounts (I use 2) with Earthlink/Mindspring. Because it should, in my mind, be so #@$ing simple to remember passwords and I worry spyware may be stealing my data, I closed Tbird and restarted my computer. When I opened Tbird instead of opening to the last inbox that had been accessed it opened on what I am going to call the "homepage." Now it remembers my passwords but isn't acting like it has for the last 3+ years. I didn't even think to look in the Local Folders because it boggles my mind that files that I have seen saved on my computer's HDD would be missing after a freaking update. I was content to change my settings in CCleaner and have it open in the last accessed inbox. Another problem that I am having is saving drafts. Before I updated every 60 seconds it would save the message I was working on. Now it is like pulling teeth to get it to remember a draft. How can I obliterate the current dysfunctional version of Tbird in order to start over and remember to NEVER update?