lost email

[coolmanoh]

I have been using Thunderbird (68.7.0) to manage 2 separate email accounts - one with Outlook and the other with Gmail. The one with Gmail no longer shows up on Thunderbird - no INBOX, SENT, or any of the usual folders. I have no idea what caused this, but I need those emails. How do I get them back?

[tanstaafl]

Don't panic, you can probably get them back. As a precaution I suggest you copy the contents of your profile somewhere safe so you don't have to worry about accidentally making things worse if you make a mistake when trying to get the missing mail back. help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder will open windows explorer at your current profile.

POP or IMAP account?

If its a POP account look in mail\pop.gmail.com in your profile for files named after your folders, with no file extensions. They're mbox files, which contains the mail for the corresponding folder. i.e. "inbox." contains the mail for the inbox, while "inbox.msf" is basically just a cache of the folder listing. You can import them into "Local Folders" using the importexporttools ng add-on. You could also just copy those files into a child directory in Local Folders, though that won't preserve the folder hierarchy.

If its a IMAP account you probably have mbox files in imapmail\imap.gmail.com in your profile. You can import them the same way into Local Folders. The IMAP server should have the original messages stored on it, the mbox files are just a optional copy.

Is the Gmail account gone from both the folder pane and tools -> account settings?

I suggest you log into Gmail webmail using a browser to verify that account still works, and see what mail is still stored on the mail server.