Read message accidentally deleted

[Gwaihir]

I've accidentally lost a message from my Read Mail folder. It's expunged from the disk, not just moved to Deleted mail/Trash. I frequently back up my mail folders using a file synchronisation program but I can't see any way to retrieve an individual message from the backup because of the way Thunderbird stores them. If I restore my mail folders from the backup I'll lose any messages since the last backup. Can anyone suggest a way to recover the message from the backup?

[DanRaisch]

Try to manually recover the message:

* - Turn off Thunderbird and do not compact
* - Locate the file containing the message (same name as the folder in Thunderbird, no extension) in your profile
* - Delete the file with the same name and the extension .msf
* - Open the file without extension with Notepad (or another text editor)
* - Locate the messages that were unintentionally deleted
* - Change the status (X-Mozilla-Status) to all zero
* - Save that file
* - Restart Thunderbird

If you first moved the message to the Trash and after that emptied the Trash, you can try it also with the file Trash in your profile.

[Gwaihir]

Thanks Dan, that's worked.

It was a bit laborious because the file is 1.7Gb. The only editor that would tackle it without complaining or crashing was Windows Write and that was excruciatingly slow, frequently showing 'Not responding' but with patience it eventually succeeded in doing the edit. Before starting to be on the safe side I made two copies of the file, one for editing and the other as a backup in case the edit screwed up, then after successfully saving the edited file I replaced the original with it.

I actually realised I had a reply to the lost message in the Sent folder that had all the content of the lost one so it wasn't a disaster but I decided to carry on with your procedure anyway just to see if it worked, for future reference.

Once again many thanks.

[DanRaisch]

You're welcome.

Have you tried notepad++ as a possible editor? https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

[Gwaihir]

I've not heard of it but have now downloaded it to try. Thanks.