Disk folders not visible to Thunderbird

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angbob
Posts: 71
Joined: June 11th, 2006, 7:29 pm
Location: New Hampshire, I think

Disk folders not visible to Thunderbird

Post by angbob »

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit SP1
Thunderbird 52.8.0 32 bit

In my disk folder Q:\mail-PortableThunderbird\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile\Mail\, there are a number of disk folders for various mail accounts I stopped using years ago.

Those disk folders contain Thunderbird files, but Thunderbird doesn't see them.

For example, there is a disk folder Q:\mail-PortableThunderbird\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile\Mail\bnet.online.com\ which contains files Inbox, Inbox.msf, msgFilterRules.dat, Sent, Sent.msf, Trash, and Trash.msf.

How can I tell Thunderbird that those disk folders contain mail?
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tanstaafl
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Posts: 49647
Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Disk folders not visible to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

It sounds like those are leftover mail folders from accounts that you deleted. You have two choices - either import those folders into an existing account such as "Local Folders" or restore the deleted accounts (and change their storage location to use the old location).

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders (easiest solution)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_de ... l_accounts
angbob
Posts: 71
Joined: June 11th, 2006, 7:29 pm
Location: New Hampshire, I think

Re: Disk folders not visible to Thunderbird

Post by angbob »

The tool in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders is really nice. Thanks!

I tried to import Inbox mbox files from several different source disk folders, into Local Folders.
Results were empty Inbox Thunderbird folders.

After flailing around, it occurred to me that I was importing mbox files whose messages I had deleted in 2005.
It was confusing, because the sizes of the disk files were substantial, and I forgot I had deleted the files.

I believe that in the mbox files, if X-Mozilla-Status has the 8 bit on, the file is marked for deletion.

By manually clearing the 8 bit, I could see the messages after importing.

Incidentally, to import an mbox, after exiting Thunderbird, I merely copy the mbox disk file into the target account's disk folder, with renaming as needed, of course.
A Thunderbird account's "Local directory" in Server Settings reveals the account's disk folder.
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