Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

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beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

Anyone know any way to retrieve stored email which Thunderbird has somehow vaporized or hidden?

I am 100% positive I did not delete it, both because it is stored locally, not on the server, and because I have not emptied the trash since I received the missing emails.

I repaired the folders containing the missing email -- to no avail.
Last edited by beeskeptical on July 14th, 2017, 11:01 am, edited 2 times in total.
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

I'm also watching the thing fail to retrieve an email I just wrote in search results.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by tanstaafl »

POP or IMAP account?
If you are using a IMAP account what is "when I delete a message" set to in the accounts server settings?
Did you login into webmail using a browser and see if a copy of the message is still there? If you're using a POP account and checked "leave message on server" in the accounts server settings and "until X days" and "Until I delete it" don't apply in this case it might still be there.

Was the inbox the folder the message disappeared from? If so, how many messages (roughly) are in that inbox?

Does this problem only occur with one account?
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

POP. Setting are leave messages on sever for at most 14 days or until I delete them.

There's no copy left on webmail because I folderized the missing messages, which also acts to delete them off the server.

Messages may have disappeared from the inbox too (I've had trouble finding messages in the past, then sometimes they'll suddenly reappear, particularly when I get a new message in the same thread), but these messages disappeared out of a local folder I created.

The problem only occurs in one account to my knowledge, but I can't swear that's the case.

Thanks.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by tanstaafl »

One possibility is its due to a corrupted folder. Pressing the repair folder button is overrated, that usually just helps if the problem is the folder listing (not the actual mail folder). Do you have some messages that are just fragments of a message, or have weird dates such as 1960?

If so, see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recover_messa ... upt_folder , though you may decide its not worth the effort to try to recover a single message.
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

I don't have any fragments or messages with weird dates, no.

In a separate thread--but perhaps related??--I'm also trying to rebuild the global index, but that's not working either.
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

Also, thank you again. I'm at a total loss and dependent on any help I can receive.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by DanRaisch »

Given these two issues, not directly related, I'm wondering if there is an issue with the system rather than simply with Thunderbird. Have you run any diagnostics on the hard drive? What security software (if any) are you running on that Mac?
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

I run Avast.
Everything is humming along fine and the mac is still pretty new. It's an SSD drive. No issues that I'm aware of or that are manifesting in any other way.

Do you know if Thunderbird does its own indexing or relies on Spotlight?

I can report now that the Activity Manager says it is "determining which messages to index in inbox." However, it has been reporting that for the last two hours or so.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by tanstaafl »

There are multiple types of indexing. If you enable global search/indexing in advanced options -> general -> advanced configuration that enables Thunderbird indexing the mbox files in order to build a search index for global search. That is what makes global search so fast. Thunderbird stores it in global-messages-db.sqlite in the profile. There is also a global-messages-db.journal temporary file used for rolling back transactions. The indexing is done in the background. Typically that takes a good while initially but once its up to date it incrementally updates it as needed for new messages reasonably quickly.

You can also set another option in advanced options -> general -> system integration to add support for the operating system's search indexing (in your case SpotLight). That creates *.mozeml files under OS X. Each file is a partial copy (up to approx. 20kb) of a message in the mail folder, stored in a .mozmsgs subdirectory. Thunderbird doesn't use those files, they're provided only for "SpotLight". Under Windows it creates *.wdseml files instead for "Windows Search Integration", which can be up to approx. 49kb. I don't know why the difference in sizes.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Files_and_fol ... hunderbird

tools -> options is replaced by "preferences" under OS X. I'm not sure if tools -> options -> advanced becomes preferences -> advanced options or preferences -> advanced or something else under OS X. What is it called? I'd like to update http://kb.mozillazine.org/Menu_differen ... x,_and_Mac accordingly.
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

I do have a box checked that says "allow spotlight to search messages."

Activity monitor is still just stuck in the mud reporting "determining which messages to index in inbox."
beeskeptical
Posts: 36
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 12:20 pm

Re: Stored email just disappeared. Whoosh!

Post by beeskeptical »

Hi, can anyone help?

Thunderbird will not index my email. It is hopelessly, defectively, uselessly stuck at "determining which messages to index in inbox."
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