backup seems to be missing a lot of messages SOLVED!

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terrathunderbird
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backup seems to be missing a lot of messages SOLVED!

Post by terrathunderbird »

Just out of curiosity, has anyone checked the accuracy of MozBackup? I was so happy that I thought I'd solved the backup problem and now I'm realizing that the backed up folders seem to be missing most of the messages.

Or is this a quirk of MBoxView?
Last edited by terrathunderbird on May 8th, 2018, 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DanRaisch
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages

Post by DanRaisch »

MozBackup is no longer maintained by the author and has not been for some time. It's better to use another backup utility or copy the entire Thunderbird profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup
terrathunderbird
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages

Post by terrathunderbird »

Thanks, Dan... I did the manual backup method in an earlier backup. Let me look at that and see if it was/is compete. I
terrathunderbird
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages

Post by terrathunderbird »

OK. I just checked a backup that I made in 2017. Same issue. Maybe maybe it's MBoxView? maybe it only reads certain emails? About 90% are not showing up in MBoxView. Is there another tool to look at the backup profile folder contents?
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DanRaisch
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages

Post by DanRaisch »

The page for mBoxView says it can "open big mbox files > 4Gb" so unless your files are larger than that you should be able to see all of the messages in a file.
You can open and view those files using a plain text editor like Notepad, or perhaps Notepad++ if the files are large. the mbox files are plain text with header data, except for any encoded attachments.
terrathunderbird
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages

Post by terrathunderbird »

I just checked again. The later backups are all bigger than 4Gig. So that explains why MBoxView isn't working for me.

The individual emails are not large. But the folder holding them is.

I just installed MVoxFileViewer, and I opened the same file and there are a LOT more messages showing. I'm trying another folder. So I may have a solution to this.
terrathunderbird
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages

Post by terrathunderbird »

Post Posted less than a minute ago
It worked! It even gives me a count for how many messages are in the folder, which MBoxView does not.

So far so good!

THANKS everyone!

So the bottom line was the I was NOT missing emails in the back. I was using an email viewer that couldn't accommodate the folder size. Yay!
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DanRaisch
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages SOLVED!

Post by DanRaisch »

I just installed MVoxFileViewer
From what URL did you obtain that utility?
terrathunderbird
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages SOLVED!

Post by terrathunderbird »

Sorry, Dan...I should have posted that.

I got it from here: http://www.freeviewer.org/mbox/

For background, I got that link from here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_Utilities#MboxViewer
under the paragraph for MBoxViwer.
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DanRaisch
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages SOLVED!

Post by DanRaisch »

Thank you.
terrathunderbird
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Re: backup seems to be missing a lot of messages SOLVED!

Post by terrathunderbird »

Thank YOU! for helping keep the forum organized and useful!
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