restored imap profile from backup, but sync deletes all the recovered emails
restored imap profile from backup to recover years of email deleted from the server (don't ask) recovered 45000 emails, easy peasy but sync immediately deletes all the recovered emails, even if specifying sync only last week
Not nice! Is starting Thunderbird offline after recovering the profile and copying to local files the only option? Is it really not possible to turn off sync for mails older than x, or apply some intelligent filtering to the synchronization?
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Do I understand correctly that you tried to sync a folder with 45k messages, i.e. upload 45k to an IMAP server? Even if you don't exceed the daily bandwidth limit of the server, uploading this way only works with small numbers of messages at a time. Copy the backup mbox files to Mail/Local Folders in the profile folder, with TB closed, and either upload limited numbers at a time, or keep the messages in Local Folders.
Sorry, I don't know what you mean by "backup mbox files." Recovering a Thunderbird profile doesn't initiate an upload to the server -- if the files are not present on the server, then sync deletes them from the profile. If there is a way to push recovered files back to the server, that would solve my problem. Storing the recovered mails in local folders is not a great solution -- unless the local folders are on shared storage, they will only be viewable from the local machine.
TB stores mail in one mbox file per folder, a file with no extension and named after the folder, e.g. Inbox. An mbox can be copied from a backup profile to Mail/Local Folders.
There is an experimental add-on that you might find useful for copying from Local Folders to an IMAP folder:
Understood, but this doesn't address the stated problem: - how can I prevent synchronization from deleting mail that exists in my profile backup but not on the server or - how can I upload email from a restored profile to the mail server
I don't think you can prevent the mail from being deleted if it doesn't exist on the server, unless you go offline (File/Offline/Work Offline); it won't magically reappear on the server just because it's in the restored profile. As already explained, copy the mbox files from the backup profile to Mail/Local Folders of the current profile, restart TB, then copy from Local Folders to the IMAP folders, in limited numbers or with the add-on.
I had started copying the emails first to Local Folders and from there to imap folders via the UI, but copying the mbox files to the ThunderbirdLocalFolders directory is a most excellent solution and saves a boatload of work. Kudos to you and thanks your help! There are thousands of emails to be recovered, but it looks like this is will work.