Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Is there a way to retrieve old emails saved on the computer, after resetting my PC?

more options

I recently reset my pc as it wasn't working after upgrading to windows 10. It said my files would all be saved. My photos and documents were all fine (also backed up elsewhere), but thunderbird disappeared (along with all the emails that were saved on my computer). I hadn't backed up my email folder. I have re-installed thunderbird, but only the recent emails (2 weeks) were available. Is there anyway to retrieve my previous emails or are they gone for good? Thank you

I recently reset my pc as it wasn't working after upgrading to windows 10. It said my files would all be saved. My photos and documents were all fine (also backed up elsewhere), but thunderbird disappeared (along with all the emails that were saved on my computer). I hadn't backed up my email folder. I have re-installed thunderbird, but only the recent emails (2 weeks) were available. Is there anyway to retrieve my previous emails or are they gone for good? Thank you

All Replies (1)

more options

Normally, a Windows Reset preserves your old user data under the following path, unless you told Windows you wanted a clean start:

C:\Windows.old\Users\username\

Can you find that folder? If so, a Thunderbird expert can describe how to copy your old mail files to the new location where Thunderbird expects to find them.

Please note that you may need to turn off the hiding of hidden files and folders in order to complete the process. This Microsoft article should help with that: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files