Can't Get My backup to Run Properly

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JonHK
Posts: 19
Joined: January 27th, 2009, 9:58 am

Can't Get My backup to Run Properly

Post by JonHK »

Basics: Win 7 machine, have been running Thunderbird for many years. Mail account is IMAP with Charter as ISP.

A few days ago, I was installing another program that uses my Charter internet mail account, and inadvertently deleted all of my IMAP mail from Charter.
I use CrashPlan as a backup and each day in the evening run a backup which includes Thunderbird.
The backup is a folder which contains my profiles, and when I look at the contents of the profiles, I can see that my emails are all there in various inboxes.
I point the profile.ini file to the location of my backed up profile, but instead of opening my backup, Thunderbird just opens and wants me to create a new account.
Can someone give me some help...this is driving me nuts, and I really need all of the backed-up email.
Thanks
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Can't Get My backup to Run Properly

Post by Brummelchen »

IMAP is online storage - its on the server. if you had deleted it in IMAP its all gone on the external server, there is nothing you can do. if you have loaded that emails into offline storage in TB before you probably have a backup, if TB wont sync his data with server data. the best thing is to ask hoster (Charter) if they are willing to restore a backup of your folders. good luck
the magic number is 51 and you are probably part of it :p
JonHK
Posts: 19
Joined: January 27th, 2009, 9:58 am

Re: Can't Get My backup to Run Properly

Post by JonHK »

As a follow-up to my post above, I just restored my CrashPlan backup to the original location, and all of the emails are back EXCEPT for the emails for my primary email address. The strange thing is, for that account, when I first opened Thunderbird immediately after the restore, ALL of the previous emails appeared BRIEFLY in my Inbox, but then they were replaced by just the few emails that have been received since the IMAP messages were deleted from the server. It's mainly those older emails, which appear briefly as described above, that I want to retrieve. What is happening with those?
JonHK
Posts: 19
Joined: January 27th, 2009, 9:58 am

Re: Can't Get My backup to Run Properly

Post by JonHK »

Response to Brummelchen...yes I have a backup of the emails, but I am having trouble getting them back into Thunderbird. I have several email addresses under my profile, and each one has an Inbox, but how can I tell which "Inbox" contains the emails that were deleted?
JonHK
Posts: 19
Joined: January 27th, 2009, 9:58 am

How to Idnetify Which "Inbox" is Which?

Post by JonHK »

I had backed up my Thunderbird profile and when I accidentally deleted all of my IMAP mail from my Charter server, I figured I could restore the lost messages from the backup. But my profile has several mail files, each one corresponding to one of my several email addresses. However, they are not listed by email address...they just have names like "mobile.charter-1.net", "mobile.charter-5.net", "imap.charter.net" etc. Each one has an "Inbox", but how do I figure out which "Inbox" in my backup is the one that has my deleted messages? I only deleted IMAP messages from the server for one of my email addresses, so I need to find which "Inbox" goes with which email address. How can I do that?
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DanRaisch
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Posts: 127187
Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: How to Idnetify Which "Inbox" is Which?

Post by DanRaisch »

Select a location outside of the Thunderbird profile and restore the files in the backup with the name "Inbox" from each of of the accounts to that location. The files will have no filename extension. Then open each file with a text editor and search for the header reading "Delivered-To: xxxxx@charter.net", where the x's are the email address for the account from which the messages were deleted in order to identify which one matches that account.

I merged your two topics as they are addressing the same issue and there would have been confusion with discussion going on separately.
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