More info... When I look in the folder that contains my e-mails, I see that the inbox is still quite a large file, around 800mB. Clearly the messages are still there but they do not appear in my inbox or in the new sub folder that I have created.

Is there any way I can retrieve these messages?

Many thans

In Thunderbird, right-click the folder and choose "Properties". Under "General Information" tab, click the "Repair Folder".

Thanks for your reply but it has not solved my problem.

I have opened the file location where the Thunderbird files are stored and found that the inbox is quite large.

Following some advice elsewhere, I deleted the inbox.msf file.

This should have rebuilt the index file but it has not recovered the lost e-mails.

I had previously tried the inbuilt file repair tool that Thunderbird provides and that has not repaired the inbox either. I have tried it again since.

Is there any way I can get these e-mails back?

Many thanks

Mike

How many bytes big is the Inbox

is it a gmail account?

Hi, Sadly not. I have my own domain supplied by Godaddy.

Thanks for the thought though.

Mike

Sorry, the inbox is 808509kB, nearly one gigabyte but only around 30 e-mails are visible. They are not gmail.

It seems to me that the e-mails are still there in the inbox folder but I cannot see them.

I have tried repairing the index and I have tried deleting the index file and so getting Thunderbird to build a new one.

Any other thoughts on how I can retrieve these ";pst" e-mails?

Mike

Correction .pst is lost. Strange typo....

Is your Inbox an IMAP folder? Is your "Archive 2016" folder an IMAP folder or under "Local Folders"?

First, backup your entire Thunderbird Profile folder to another location for safe-keeping. Do this while Thunderbird is not running.

Next, run Thunderbird and create a two folders under "Local Folders" that we will work with. Name them TestArchive2016 & TestInbox.

Now close Thunderbird and use Windows Explorer to go to the location where your e-mails are stored in your Thunderbird Profile folder. That will be the "ImapMail" folder for IMAP and/or "Mail" folder for POP and Local Folders.

Find the folder called "Archive 2016.mozmsgs". Is there anything in it? Hopefully there are lots of files with the extension .wdseml. These are the individual e-mails. Copy (not move), all the contents of this folder to the "TestTestArchive2016.mozmsgs" folder under Mail/Local Folders. If that folder doesn't exist yet, create it. Then copy (not move), the "Archive 2016" file to Mail/Local Folders and rename it "TestArchive2016". Do not copy over the "Archive 2016.msf" file.

Do the same thing for the "Inbox.mozmsgs" and "Inbox" file, to "TestInbox.mozmsgs" and "TestInbox" file.

Now run Thunderbird and see what you find in the two test folders.

Also, check this setting to make sure that it is set to "Don't delete any messages":

Thunderbird menu: Tools: Account Settings: "Disk Space" for "Local Folders" and each POP e-mail account. See my screenshot below.

Hi Bruce, Thanks for your kind help and advice. It was a POP3 server but I have fixed the problem using a different method.

What I did was to open the large inbox file using a text editor. I used MS notebook. I could then see the HTML content of each message. As there were so many messages, it took a long time to load them up in MS Notebook.

In the headers of each message was a line giving the X-Mozilla-Status:. In just about every case it was showing it as either 0009 or 0019 or 001b.

X-Mozilla-Status: 0009 or X-Mozilla-Status: 0019 or X-Mozilla-Status: 001b

I then used the search and replace function to change the X-Mozilla-Status: to 0000 for every message. This step took a long time.

X-Mozilla-Status: 0000

I then over wrote the inbox file with the modified version (having previously backed up the corrupted inbox file) which had the X-Mozilla-Status: lines altered to 0000 for all messages.

Rebuilding the index files using the Thunderbird repair function and hey presto, my missing e-mails reappeared new, unread messages, complete with attachments.

I was then able to move them to the archive 2016 folder and all's well that ends well.

Thanks again for your help and I hope that this does not become necessary again.

I have a fairly powerful PC and even so, each stage of this process took a lot of time.

Thanks again for responding.

Glad you got it working. To help people in the future with this issue, please change the "Chosen Solution" here to your last message which is the solution.

Wilco! Thanks to Wayne and Bruce for their kind assistance.

E-mails are now all recovered.....

Phew!