Backingup Gmail with Mozbackup

[john9210]

I have been using Mozbackup of years to backup FireFox and Thunderbird. I use Gmail IMAP. Recently, all my email messages suddenly disappeared in TB and on the Gmail server. Totally gone. I ran Mozbackup to reinstall the messages but none reinstalled! Why not? Aren’t messages downloaded from the Gmail server to TB? That is, aren’t the messages now stored permanently (until I delete them) on my computer? If not I could understand that Mozbackup cannot back them up.

[tanstaafl]

The offline folders you restored were probably deleted when Thunderbird synch'd the account. They are a local mirror of whats on the server , not a backup.

Rename the *.pcv file to *.zip, unzip it and import the offline folders into "Local Folders" using the ImportExportTools add-on per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders . Then move the imported messages into the remote folders in your IMAP account.

Before you do that I'd investigate what caused all of the messages to disappear. Have you verified they're really gone by logging into webmail using a browser? If something caused the local directory setting in your IMAP account to change all of your messages would appear to disappear in Thunderbird even though they're just being ignored.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Empty_folders