right click the folder, select properties and then the repair button

Thanks Matt! Would have been delighted if that had worked! Interestingly all the mail from the date the computer was set up for the account ( a POP account, storing all mail on the Mac ) which was the 30th June 2015 to the 16th of February is in the inbox, and mail from the moment of the restart after the power out is there. Just that critical four months missing. I can't find by searching on dates of lost mail either. Any other ideas?

Only messy ideas.... The file that stores the mail is probably corrupt. You could try manually editing the file. It is text based. but it is messy and not for the feint of heart.

Thanks again Matt I suppose I don't have much to lose.. though I'm probably a little faint of heart for this one. Is there a 'how to' for this somewhere?

OK, Matt and anybody out there

When I open the inbox file I can read two of the first emails received on the computer when Tbird was first loaded and used. After that it just becomes a huge block of random looking text, like those blocks of text you get when you send a message using PGP.

Even the messages which aren't corrupted are not apparent in this block of text.

That huge block of text is probable an image. Or a binary attachment. Look to the bottom of the file where you more recent mails are located.

As a demonstration to yourself, select save as on a normal mail with and attachment and save it as a file with an EML extension. Open that file in the text editor. and have a look at what "normal" looks like.

Hi Matt I have gone to the bottom of the file and found the recent mail that has come in since the power out, it is OK. You are right, the huge text blocks are images and so on. They are just so monolithic I had missed the bits of interpretable text between the block.

Bad news is that I can find mail up to Dec 16 then it starts again on April 14, not even a bunch of garble in between. A lot of mail is lost and I would have seen at least it taking up an appropriate portion of the file.

Is there any chance it i somewhere else? Otherwise I think it is completely gone which seems strange.

Regards Eric

If you have a mozmsg folder for the inbox, a truncated version of the mail may be in there, but at best you will get the text portions back, no images or attachments. As to what happened, this is a guess, but if the file was open when the power went out, the size could have been misreported in the file system which hay have led to a chunk just simply getting chopped off the end of the file. It is possible that even now the file is not 100%.

I would suggest you move/copy all mail from the folder to another folder and right click the folder and select compact. This will create a new file to hold the inbox, but in the process there is a possibility that mail may simply go poof if the file is bad in some way, hence the copy move before doing anything.

Hi Matt haven't given up yet but am no longer able to find the inbox files.

Originally I used

Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/directory_service;1"].getService( Components.interfaces.nsIProperties).get("ProfD", Components.interfaces.nsIFile).path

pasted into the error console to work out where the inbox was and what it was called, typed the address into finder and there it was. Now I cannot do it that way nor can I find my way to the file because the Library folder is not apparent. I will talk t a Mac person tomorrow ( I'm not very Mac ) and see if they can help. Also can't find a mozmsg folder.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Matt, is mozmsg a windows thing to integrate with windows search functions? If so is there an OS X equivalent?

Oh, and just learned the inbox file location is available in folder properties. Way easier.

As a role up.

Mozmsgs is a windows search option. It could probably be manually invoked on a MAC, but it is a bit late for that now anyway.

There is a button in the troubleshooting information on the help menu that opens your profile folder in finder.

POP mail is in a sub folder of Mail. Imap mail accounts are in a sub folder of IMAP mail. Not as precise as the folder setting your using now. But universal.