What I would do is to move those email folders into your documents directory or another partition. Perhaps you can make a master folder called "MyEmails" where the folders can reside.

Next in TBird, recreate the email account that was once used for the email folder. In otherwords, if the email folder was once for a GMail account, then recreate that account in TBird.

Next, in the properties of that GMAIL account there is a way to change its default email folder located under the profile to the email folder that you moved out of the profile.

Once the old folder is sync'd to the account, TBird will default to it as if the folder was still under the profile.

To sync the old folder to the GMail account, click on Menu>Tools>Accounts

Next click on Server Settings of the account and find Local Directory input field at bottom of the Server Settings dialog window.

BTW: If you create a new email account, TBird will try to download all the email messages from the server again. You can however, bypass this by disabling your internet connection temporarily. Then proceed to create the account in TBird and accept its error messages that it cant sync with the server. After the email account is listed by TBird (though not sync with the server), you can retarget the default folder and see your old emails. Then you can enable the internet connection again.

Sorry, but really worried now. Just gone back to Mozilla & found that i have now lost more e mails - even those received today, but have some from 5th January , a few from 2016 , and more from 2015. What is happening?

it is unclear if they are lost emails or just not being indexed anymore. its also unclear if other files on your computer are not being indexed as well. as such, you may be experiencing a faulty hard disk if its not maintaining its index and master file table, ie MFT.

for now, i would unplug pc from the internet. next copy all your email folders as it to a different hard drive, especially if they have old emails in them. but if the online email account is still retaining copies of your emails, then copying the folders isnt necessary because they can be rebuilt/resync'd via your online account when the system becomes functional again.

so after you unplg the pc from the net, execute computer maintenance like check disk and defrag.

next check out what add-ins the tbird has installed and remove them. (I found the calendar add-in to be unnecessary for me).

also, email programs can become infected. but its unclear if this is a problem in this case. in anycase, you can try running programs like spybot.

but none of the above will be helpful if the hard disk is going bad. do a check disk and test the symptoms you have while off the internet and see what the results are.

I have checked the disc and defragged.Not sure how to remove add-ons but now finding that I cannot receive e mails at all. I get error message #AUTH201 but if I put in my password for sky it does not accept it. Really getting worried now . I ran my antivirus prog for complete scan just in case but nothing showing!

well, since i dont think tbird is the problem. and you eliminated some of the possible hard disk and os problems that could destablize tbird, my next step would log into sky without tbird and see if there are any issues on their server side.

see if all your emails are still there via the online account.

also if they permit their email server to be accessed via email programs, like tbird, outlook, etc, then double check to see what the settings are for setting up email accounts and transfer those settings to tbird.

unfortunately, i dont use sky. but perhaps, they are encrypting emails?

if sky turns out to be a-ok on their side, all your emails are still there and the server settings have been inputted into tbird, then there are a couple of more things i can suggest, like repairing the inbox, reinstalling tbird, creating an account and inbox with a regular email account like gmail and see if the problem you are experiencing continues with a different provider or not.

Hi Sorry to be such a pain! I have now managed to get back on to my sky emails by resetting my password on sky & reentering it on Thunderbird. I stii cannot find my old e mails that were there originally. However I have just noticed that in the bottom RH corner it shows a figure of 72 unread mails but next to it is a figure of 1679 which is probably about the number of missing ones. Could that be significant?

yes, that is a clue. try re-indexing that inbox by right clicking on the account name of the folder and select properties. there should be a "repair button" for you to try out.

however, since it sounds like your online account is not storing your old messages, whereas you could always download all the stored messages onto your computer again, then it would be prudent to make a backup copy of that crashed folder before repairing it.

one never knows if the repair will wipe out the contents of that folder in order to re-stablize it again. and who knows, sometime in the future there may be a way that comes across your desk with how to retrieve the old emails from the copy you made as a backup.

I have now done this & managed to retrieve all of my messages by doing it for each folder so I have now saved them separately in my documents. however as soon as I move away from each folder they disappear again! I can only get them back again by repairing once more. Now starting to despair & wondering whether I should just call it a day and go for another e mail service provider as it is now taking over my life!

well, the folders should not be crashing like this. what version is your windows? what version is your tbird? have you reinstalled tbird during or prior to your thread herein? and what is size of your hard disk space, free space and size of your ram?

hi again I am on Windows 7, 64-bit,2.1 ghz. My thunderbird is 45.6.0. My hard disk has been defragged & has 181 gb free. everything else is running OK thanks for keeping on trying

ok, lets try a couple of things

1) ensure adequate pagefile space. go to control panel>system>advancesettings>performance>advance>change

set custom size of min and max and cited on the page file dialog.

next reboot and retry your tbird and test your inbox folder.

if still same, lets try another thing to free up the machines ram memory.

no change i'm afraid

next step is to free up memory, in case their is something running that is crashing your inbox's or destabilizing tbird.

click on start>run>msconfig

on the boot tab click on start up tab there and then advanced option. check the no of processors and maximum memory. in the drop down fields select the maximum value they provide. click ok, then apply.

next to the start up tab and uncheck all the items on it. click apply and reboot and retest your tbird and in boxes. (if you want, you could jot down which ones were checked so that you can recheck them later or investigate them)

if all of the above proves futile, then last step is to create a google mail account and see if tbird behaves with it. if so, then time to give that "sky" email a ticket to the pasture.

Hi I don't know what has changed , but I have just relaunched mozilla & everything is back! I have no idea what i did (if anything) but it is all there! thank you so much for all of your help - i am sure that it is something to do with your suggestions even if I don't know which It is really great to know that there are people out there who are prepared to give up so much of their time for "basics" like myself grateful thanks !!!

you're welcome.

imo, whatever afflictions tbird was experiencing then the other programs were also experiencing some kind of problem.

however, in the interim, proceed with the msconfig method above.

no point in fine tuning your system halfway only by expanding the page file limits.

so if junk is running in memory at the same time your good programs are running, you can disable them via the msconfig method.

take care and thanks for your feedback!

~dbben