1
Yesterday I set up Thunderbird: created a new IMAP profile, got messages from the server (no big deal, about 400 messages), archived some of them and moved to Junk some of them, leaving only 3 in Inbox.
Today, I open Thunderbird, press Get Messages, then a dialog asks me if I want to have folders compacted, I press Yes, then I press Get Messages again. I get no new messages, but all seems fine. A few seconds later, as I was actually reading one of the 3 messages in Inbox, most of messages are gone: all 3 in Inbox, all in Junk and most in Archives. In archives, remain a few, and, curiously, these seem to be the first messages I archived.
I checked the server (webmail), the situation is the same there. Synchronization is on.
I am afraid, as it seems, Thunderbird mistakenly deleted my mail.
I am clueless. What could have happened? What can I do to try to recover my messages that are gone? How can I do prevent this problem from happening again?
MHB
Posted 2018-08-03T11:26:36.983
Reputation: 11
I've just checked my Thunderbird, attempted to archive some files, noticed it wasn't putting in year-named folders. Opened archive, all archived mails (100s across several years) have been deleted but the most recently archived mails are in some. Attempted removal of MSF files to clean; no dice. Files are removed from server too. Bad thunderbird! – pbhj – 2018-12-01T12:33:31.607
1@pbhj Sorry for that. Ever since it happened to me, every time I open up Thunderbird, it asks me if I want to compact folders while it is still fetching new mail... That doesn't seem to be good... So every time I cancel the compact operation... I naturally don't trust it anymore. :-( – MHB – 2018-12-03T14:36:15.787