What do you mean by 'after refreshing my windows 8.1 laptop'? Do you mean you wiped the hard drive and reinstalled the OS and then reinstalled Thunderbird?

Did you perform a backup of your thunderbird Profile folder and saved it to an external drive before removing and reinstalling OS?

Are you talking about an IMAP or Pop mail account?

If IMAP, then all the emails will be stored on the server, so you should be able to recreate the IMAP mail account, subscribe to see the desired folders and see emails.

If Pop, or if IMAP and had emails stored in Local Folders then these emails were stored on your computer and you would have needed to create a backup of the Profile folder, so that you could reinstall the Profile folder.

You can check to see if you still have emails in your Thunderbird Profile or whether you have more than one Profile folder and Thunderbird is pointing to the wrong one. You would need to make hidden files and folders visible first.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders

In thunderbird

• Help > Troubleshooting information
• click on 'Show folder' and a new window opens shwoing your Profile folder.
• Close Thunderbird now.

Check to see how many Profiles you have. click on 'Profiles' - see image below In my example, I have one Profile folder and I am open on that Profile which is usually called xxxxxxxx.default. where the x's are letters and numbers. If there is only one Profile: then this is the one you are using, so if it does not have old emails, then you will need to use a backup in order to get emails back. Any emails still on the server will be downloaded to it.

If there are two or more, : you can check to see if they have the emails.

Pop mail accounts are located here:

• click on 'Mail' folder
• click on pop mail account name

This lists all your Folders as mbox files. mbox files do not have any extension, they are listed as files. The mbox files contain emails listed one after the other in the order they were downloaded. These files can be opened using 'Notepad'. Each one will also have another file of same name with a .msf extension. They are indexing files and do not have emails in them.

If you discover there is another Profile with emails in it, you can point Thunderbird to use that Profile instead. So make a note of the Profile name and where it is located. Close the window - top right X

Open thunderbird.

In Thunderbird.

• Tools > Account Settings > Server Settings for the pop account name
• Bottom right look for: 'Local directory'
• click on 'Browse' button and locate the other Profile and pop mail account.
• click on 'Select Folder'.
• Click on OK to save changes to Account settings.

You might need to restart Thunderbird.

Thanks for that. It confirms that I have lost them. Windows 8.1 claims that "refreshing" does not delete any files, but only removes apps which were not on the machine when it came from the factory. Obviously untrue. Regards

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/restore-refresh-reset-pc

On this website page, it does say: Resetting your PC reinstalls Windows but deletes your files, settings and applications – except for the applications that came with your PC.

As Thunderbird did not come with Windows then it would be deleted and it sounds like this also included files.

So this line : Refreshing your PC reinstalls Windows and keeps your personal files and settings. perhaps only refer to default Windows files.

but I agree it is misleading.

Have a look to see if there is a Windows.old folder in the C Drive. also check the recycle bin.

This is where the Thunderbird Profile folder should be located.

• C:\Users\Windows user name\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\Profile name\

If you have reinstalled thunderbird, then this will be where any new Profile will be stored and where the old one should be located if the refresh did not remove it.

Maybe the old one can be located here; worth looking just in case.

• C:Windows.old\Users\Windows user name\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\Profile name\

These would be hidden folders so you will need to make hidden files and folders visible.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders