Old messages not showing

[Ratin]

Hi,

My parents have a problem with thunderbird.
The news emails show perfectly but it seems like older messages are not showing at all (in inbox) since 2 weeks. (so last message is ~25 june 2017, which is not normal).
When I search for email I got results from all old mails + They still have all their old emails on tablet (which use another service).
I searched for solution and tried some things but no result until now so I'm looking for help.
Thanks.

[Ratin]

Nevermind, apparently all their hotmail emails have been deleted so the problem doesn't come from thunderbird... I have no idea of what is happening but it don't look good for them ;_;

They still have all their messages on tablet but maybe it's just a local save of the emails which don't exist anymore ? ;_;

[Ratin]

Hi again,

I am trying to understand the reason.
Is it possible that thunderbird deleted all emails from a hotmail account for any reason ?

Thanks

[DanRaisch]

Hard to say without more information or knowing how they use Thunderbird and that tablet.

How is the account set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP? Find out using menu path Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.

[Ratin]

Thanks for the answer
it is imap which seems to be the default option.
I don't think that the tablets are related, their few mails on it must be local tablet save because their hotmail accounts are near empty.
I've just read others messages on this forum which say that it is normal that imap delete messages from original server...
I hope there is a solution for them.

[DanRaisch]

I've just read others messages on this forum which say that it is normal that imap delete messages from original server...
I hope there is a solution for them.

Actually that's not true. IMAP accounts don't usually delete messages unless they exceed some limit for length of storage (how long have the messages been on the server) or they exceed the allowed storage space. Even then there are usually messages from the email provider that those limits are being reached.

[Ratin]

Indeed I've just reread the difference between imap and pop3 and it seems that imap was the good choice to keep messages on server.
So it means that their accounts were well configured and they suddenly lost everything without any message from server and without knowing why ;_;
I still have no idea of the reason and I'm currently trying to recover mails with tools on outlook.

Thanks for the answer and the help.