After using Thunderbird for several years I noticed my backup of it kept increasing. It had always seemed bigger than it should be as I only keep a few emails archived in it. Eventually I saw an extension called XPunge which stated that Thunderbird does not delete your emails (even if you empty the Trash folder) unless you compress the folders (which is what that extension does by clicking on the button they provide). This made me realize that this was why my email backup was becoming so big. So as long as you don’t use the compress folder option in Thunderbird, you have the ability to restore your deleted email, including the attachments.
Go into Thunderbird’s profile folder then inside the Mail folder. Now depending on how many email address you have setup in Thunderbird it could be in several folders, but it will be named with either Local Folders or with the POP address you are using. (You can find out easily by going to Tools >> Account Settings and then going under the account you want to restore email address for and look under its Server Settings and at the bottom look at the path for Local directory). I’d recommend closing Thunderbird once you know where to go. Make a backup of the file called Inbox (Note: it’s the one with out an extension, Inbox.msf is for something else). Now open up Inbox in your favorite Text Editor (Notepad, Crimson Editor, Notepad++, etc.), it may take a few minutes to load depending on how big the file is, some of mine were over 90MB. Don’t open it in WordPad, since it will add formatting to the file, also keep in mind Notepad on Windows 98 has a file size limit and won’t handle really huge files. Now you can search for whatever emails you are looking to restore, or have fun looking at really old emails. When you find one you want to restore, scroll up and change number after X-Mozilla-Status: to be a 0 (zero). It’s okay to just make it a single zero rather than a four digit number. Don’t bother changing the X-Mozilla-Status2. Do that for each email you want to restore. Then save the file. Open up Thunderbird and it should now be in your Inbox marked as Unread (Note: it may take awhile for it to read that Inbox).
problem is all thunderbird mail have been deleted
to virus how to recover it
· Kris says:
Great, Thanks a lot, I have located my mails !
They are in Application data > Thunderbird > Profiles
But, next, when I go to Thunderbird > Tools > Account settings there is nothing to see or adapt, it’s just an empty screen
Program Hjsplit on http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/ can split big file to lot of smaller files , for example 50 Mb , and later is easy to manipulate data.
Make a copy of big file in one folder ( if something goes wrong original is safe) , split on smaller files and put extension .txt on every file.
Regards.
Hi,
These instructions are really great – I accidentally deleted all of my emails….
However, I’ve just spent a good couple of hours changing the codes for all of the emails I need and have gone to save the notepad file, but it tells me that there is not enough storage to complete this. I have a hard drive with 150GB on my computer – I’m sure the file isn’t that big!
Can anybody advise on how to save this file?
Thanks a lot
Very useful tip indeed. Thank u very many…
Hello all. Is there any way to retrieve mail from a deleted T’bird profile? Or restore the profile? I tried several file undelete programs but they do not seem to find the deleted profile.
The profile was deleted using profile manager and is not in the profile folder now at all (of course).
Thanx.
I cannot edit the Inbox file tht I open in Notepad++. However, other files such as Trash, sent etc are editable
Please help!
Thanks for the tip on how to recover a file. I thought I could fix any problem by deleting the .MSF index file.
I had a user that deleted all his old emails, but kept them in his inbox so he could refer back to them. We had to wipe his hard drive and when we restored his inbox, nothing showed up.
Your tip to change the X-Mozilla-Status: to 0 solved the problem. But Notepad ++ cannot open a 600 meg file. Textpad can.
thanks again
I lost my mails while moving the mails from inbox to local folder. now as per your suggestion when i check inbox file, it does not contain anything, except 2 new mails.
Does it mean I cant recover them??
First of all thanks !
I have the same problem as Brian and Brando !
My Inbox mbox file is corrupted. It’s 3.95GB and i when i open it with editor all i can see inside is hex with 00 00 00 00 00
Any help please? I have more than 14000emails on that inbox !
Taher
Hi,
I’m using Mozilla Thunderbird version 2.0.0.23 (20090812).
I deleted my mails accidentally from my Inbox – I did a Shift+delete
I checked the approach you suggested for recovering them back.
But I do not see any files without .msf extension in my Profile folders.
Please help . How do I recover deleted emails.
Hi all,
unfortuantely there are rare answers on IMAP … what I did yesterday was very paneful: with one IMAP account in Thunderbird of a friend’s computer we switched to a new mail address in server settings of TB 2.0.0.23 in assumption it was a POP account locally and remote. After pressing Enter with the mail address changed TB synchronized the local mail account data with the new empty server account. So the local side got empty as well. Unfortunately before realizing what happened we deleted the old mail account on the ISP’s server side. So all what we have is a backup of some hours before the sh*t was done.
But the backup files only contain lots of .msf files and not a single one with no extension! It seems to be that TB administrates mail data different on IMAP accounts. When I look into such a .msf file I see index data and mail data as well.
One hack I tried is: putting one .msf file in place of the mail profile within an existing subfolder and TB closed before that action … I reopen TB and create a folder parallel to the Inbox with the name I had before containing the .msf file copied – TB (sometimes) shows the contents of the subfolder now, but it is not accessible because there is an IMAP error raised from mail server on non-existing folder … so I can’t copy the mails in there to elsewhere. Closing TB in this situation deletes the .msf file copied.
Any ideas to recover from that?
Konran
Thank you so much for that discription!!! It really saved my life. Almost 1000 e-mails are restored. THANK YOU
Full virus scan found two in an inbox of Thunderbird.
OK… BUT, when they were moved to quarantine it really messed up the inbox database. Most of the hundred or so show blank. Some are crossed up between what shows in header and what is in body. (I recognize both but they don’t go together)
This is the second time my monthly scan has found the “DHL package waiting for you” which I thought I avoided opening and removed completely.
Tonight I took the Thunderbird->Profiles…->Mail out of the scan list. I don’t like to skip looking at Mail like this but I don’t like to lose good emails either.
Any suggestions?
ken
Hi,
We have a problem with a months worth (December 2009) of lost Thunderbird emails. My wife deleted some for her small business and seemed to have wiped out all the (important) last month’s. December’s “in” emails. I found “Inbox” and got a text editor that would gobble up the 2.4Gb of “Inbox” and display it, but I can’t seem to find any of the files. This may not be Blog protocol, but do you ever, for a professional fee (PayPal or CC or check in the mail) help people out with this (for us) serious problem? We stuck right now. Thanks, George D.
That’s George D. at infoaml@yahoo.com.
Hi,
Maybe you’ve seen this before… and will post an answer…
Deleted a months worth of IN emails for a small business, in our Thunderbird. Went to “Inbox” and opened it in a text editor that could (slowly) show its 2.4 GB worth of Inbox text. Found the emails from January which were OK, but working backwards in the text reader, where you would expect the deleted files to start to be, is nothing but what looks like garbage ascii text, pages and pages.
It’s like the emails that are deleted are there, but there is no “X-Mozilla-Status” like in the following files in the text reader, or readable text, just scrambled nonsense, maybe ? zipped ? data with the emails hidden inside them? With no “X-Mozilla-Status” with its zero to be reset. Can this scrambled ascii text be my zipped and missing December emails? Can I still save them? How to do this? All I need is Dec. worth of emails. Any help is appreciated. Thanks,
George
infoaml
I believe the “wierd ascii” you mention are attachments and since they are in binary format they appear all wierd. They will be quite long also. Although I’m doing this from memory. Sorry for not answering everyone’s questions on here but there were too many and a lot of them I would have to research or test my thunderbird install out with.
Thanks for the answer, I really appreciate it. These garbage files are attachments (jpgs, etc) like you say, but when I look for the lost month of December 2009, these “junk ascii” begin (going backwards in time) in the TBird “Inbox” file, exactly where the lost files would be (i.e. Dec 31st back to Dec 1 are all gone in the app.) So the missing month can not be found in a text search, whereas Dec 1, 2008 can be found in the same Inbox file, with its attendent X-Mozilla-status string. But no where can I find any Dec 2009 days with the X-Mozilla-status in any kind of search. And that month was all my wife deleted in the program three days ago!
I don’t want to be so concerned but it’s a real problem now, would there be anybody we could pay you might know to check in over the phone or via email to give us kind of techadvice, I’m pretty tech aware and can follow directions like a rocket. If they’re gone we have to live with it, but I don’t think these emails are gone. Thanks, George
You might try looking at the “Trash” file also (make sure its the one with no extension on it). Or if it was filtered into a folder, look for a file with the name of that folder. So if you have a folder called “Family” in Thunderbird and it was in there, look for a file with that name and without an extension.
If that doesn’t work you might post a message on the mozillaZine forums for Thunderbird.
Hello, I can not restore my whole backup profile folders in Thunderbird. Yesterday I try open my Thunderbird to read my emails and I was supprise that thunderbird open but ask me about brand new setup. All accounts and email folders (Inbox, sent, junk and so) was missing. After I backup in AppData Thunderbird Folder and I reinstall Thunderbird software. After i rename new Thunderbird folder in AppData and paste there old backup back. I try open Thunderbird but is happen same problem. I was asked to creating new account and so. I exit from this setup and check what is in Thunderbird. And again same problem. There was not any folders on left top window where there usably are. I mean folders with my old emails. But in AddressBook was all old contacts,emails addresses and so. This mean AdressBook was restored fine. But emails not. Than I go to AppData, Thunderbird,my old profile folder and go to Mail folder. I see in Mail folder all this missing folders (Inbox, send, junk and so). The size of those mail files is over 4 GB, this mean all those old emails are there. Now I need to know what to do now. How can i fix this problem. I need those old Emails again back to work. Please, Please help me. Thank you.
I can only see emails from 2008…nothing from 2010. Any idea at how to solve this problem?
All I have to say is UltraEdit. Forget about using any other text editor. It’s amazing.
Thanks.. it really works
I deleted some folders from my account, also from Trash (ADM_SCM_DOORS is one of them). I did not compact folders.
And the only trace that I have is the .sbd directory an the .msf file
Is there any chance to recover my emails ?
Thanks for any advice
Mihaela
The .sbd and .msf files do not have email messages in them.
I followed your procedure and it worked fine using Notepad++ until I got to the point in the Inbox file wheremy wife had upgraded to Thunderbird 3.0+ and everything from that point on became unreadable! The problem was that 6 months of my wife’s emails in her Inbox had mysteriously disappeared for reasons unknown! One of my sons who has had similar problems with Thunderbird 3.0+ said to delete the file Inbox.msf in the users profile and restart Thunderbird and low and behold everything that disappeared was back! Alleluia!
I had a power outage yesterday and when it came back, after chkdsk, my inbox file was gone. I don’t know how big it was but probably quite big. Any ideas on how to get it back?
thanks,
Jim
This works perfectly and I strongly advise using the Crimson Editor. Works a charm!
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You
saved
my
life!