The reason I reinstalled Thunderbird was, because I read somewhere in the community forums that my problem might be solved. The original problem was computer related, I accidentally erased all network protocols on my wife's Japanese PC and we had no internet connection for sometime. When I finally unravelled the connection dilemma and got things working the wife was in shock because her inbox was empty. I reassured her that the emails resided outside the programme. Hence the try at reinstalling Thunderbird. Well, I didn't get the result I was hoping for. The reinstall only fetched the messages that were waiting on the server. Now I'm not sure of what exactly the problem is. But I'm confident it is solvable but can I do it? Am I able? Thanks for reading this far. Gregory