which file records which POP messages have been downloaded?

[emaharg]

I have restored a backup copy of TB (and I use POP)
This is probably a query for Gmail users...
I restored a one month old copy of TB (due to corrupted data), so now want to download again the emails of the last month from Gmail into TB, so the record is complete.
Any hints on how to do this?

In future, if a single folder with many messages gets corrupted (loads of messages dropped, messages from other folders included) is there a way to re-index the folder?

[tanstaafl]

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

The popstate.dat file records what messages have been downloaded for the account. While its possible to edit that file its inconvenient as it identifies messages just by a message-id header. Usually you either leave it alone or delete the entire file. It does have a time stamp for each message, so you could try deleting entries for that month using a text editor (NOT a word processor). I don't know if they are sorted by date/time or not. If you do that I suggest you backup that file beforehand.

You can repair the current folder listing by right clicking on the folder in the folder pane, selecting properties, and then pressing the repair folder button. That rebuilds the listing based on the current contents of the mbox file (folder).

Its possible to have both a POP and IMAP account for the same mailbox. If you're missing some messages it might be simplest to copy the entire month of data from the IMAP account to the POP account and then use an add-on such as https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... te/?src=ss to remove any duplicates.

[makaiguy]

[Edit: I see tanstaafl, as usual, has beat me to the punch. Oh, well, here's my reply anyhow....]

I have restored a backup copy of TB (and I use POP)
This is probably a query for Gmail users...
I restored a one month old copy of TB (due to corrupted data), so now want to download again the emails of the last month from Gmail into TB, so the record is complete.
Any hints on how to do this?

Big time caveat: I haven't had any POP accounts for years, so I don't know if my knowledge still applies.

There is a file in your profile (Mail subfolder, then the subfolder for this mail account) called popstate.dat. (Occasionally new TBird versions change the name of files it uses - I don't know if popstate.dat is still the current name.) It contains the information about which messages have been downloaded from the server and their status. The popstate.dat file in your backup should reflect the message status from the time of the backup. If you've replaced the popstate.dat file in your profile with the one from your backup TBird should then download any new messages since the date of the backup.

Note that one of the many peculiarities of a gmail account is when there are a LOT of messages to download it may parcel them out a few at a time until it gets caught up.

For more information on the popstate.dat file, see the Mozillazine Knowledge Base article: Pospstate.dat

In future, if a single folder with many messages gets corrupted (loads of messages dropped, messages from other folders included) is there a way to re-index the folder?

Compact the folder. If that doesn't fix it, see this:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_fo ... em_to_work