Disaster Repeated (Solved)

[John Liebson]

Four of the five folders/subfolders that had all of their contents removed at some unknown date have had this disaster repeated. I know that at least one of the four had its information as recently as yesterday, as I had a few new emails in, and I left the two that had been there and which I wanted to keep; furthermore, although I've not yet restored it, Macrium Reflect shows that as of yesterday's incremental backup, there were contents in that subfolder. I just checked last Monday's full backup, and all of the now-empty folders show that they had content at that time.

What could possibly be the cause of this problem?

===

I copied Licenses from Macrium Relfect to the desktop, renamed it BAKLicenses, and copied it to the Tb profile; sadly, not to mention maddingly, when I tried to copy the contents of BAKLicenses to Licensenses, the contents of the BAK folder disappeared and nothing was copied to the Licenses folder. This same failure took place the first time I encountered the emptied folders, and the only way I could find to fix it was to reinstall Tb and start over, having to reset all of the options, a time-consuming operation. At least setting up the new profile itself was easy: I entered my name, email, password, and Tb found my necessary information to create a copy of the profile itself.

If anyone can figure out what is causing this horrible behavior, I would certainly like to know what that is and how to fix it.

[John Liebson]

Four of the five folders/subfolders that had all of their contents removed at some unknown date have had this disaster repeated. I know that at least one of the four had its information as recently as yesterday, as I had a few new emails in, and I left the two that had been there and which I wanted to keep; furthermore, although I've not yet restored it, Macrium Reflect shows that as of yesterday's incremental backup, there were contents in that subfolder. I just checked last Monday's full backup, and all of the now-empty folders show that they had content at that time.

What could possibly be the cause of this problem?

===

I copied Licenses from Macrium Relfect to the desktop, renamed it BAKLicenses, and copied it to the Tb profile; sadly, not to mention maddingly, when I tried to copy the contents of BAKLicenses to Licensenses, the contents of the BAK folder disappeared and nothing was copied to the Licenses folder. This same failure took place the first time I encountered the emptied folders, and the only way I could find to fix it was to reinstall Tb and start over, having to reset all of the options, a time-consuming operation. At least setting up the new profile itself was easy: I entered my name, email, password, and Tb found my necessary information to create a copy of the profile itself.

If anyone can figure out what is causing this horrible behavior, I would certainly like to know what that is and how to fix it.

=====
Zany idea: I can copy the entire profile to the desktop from Macrium, but have no idea of what to do with it. Is it even possible to replace the existing profile with a copy? Even if that can be done, I don't know if Tb itself will just repeat the emptying of folders/subfolders. Because the Macrium backup is of the entire disc, as far as I know I cannot restore anything such as the profile directly from the backup. I use the browser feature to find the backups of the folders/subfolders, copy them and paste them to the desktop for use in trying to restore them in the Tb profile.

[tanstaafl]

Check the local directory settings in the accounts server settings hasn't changed behind your back. If it did, Thunderbird is looking in the wrong place for any files for that account and will only automatically create special folders such as the inbox and sent folders if they're missing.

I assume you're using POP accounts.

[John Liebson]

Check the local directory settings in the accounts server settings hasn't changed behind your back. If it did, Thunderbird is looking in the wrong place for any files for that account and will only automatically create special folders such as the inbox and sent folders if they're missing.

I assume you're using POP accounts.

Setting is where it has been for a long time: C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\n066c9x0.default-release-1

Given that the only way I was able to fix this just a week or two ago was to reinstall Tb; the in-use profile is one created by that process. Not expecting any thing good, I did try to paste one folder when opening Tb in Safe Mode; my expectation was met.

[tanstaafl]

The "local directory" setting is where an account stores its files. That is not the same as the profiles location and doesn't even have to be within the profile directory (though it normally is).

[John Liebson]

The "local directory" setting is where an account stores its files. That is not the same as the profiles location and doesn't even have to be within the profile directory (though it normally is).

You wrote "Check the local directory settings in the accounts server settings". I clicked on Accounts/Server Settings, and there is only one "Local Directory" entry there, which is the information that I posted. Where is the setting that you are asking about?

[tanstaafl]

C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\n066c9x0.default-release-1 is the location of a profile. An example of a POP Gmail accounts local directory in that profile would be
C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\n066c9x0.default-release-1\Mail\pop.gmail.com

A local directory normally uses either the Mail or ImapMail child directory in the profile as its base, and creates a child directory in it named after the mail server. If you have multiple accounts with the same mail server and account type it adds a numeric suffix to the child directory. i.e. pop.gmail-1.com.

[John Liebson]

Here is my other setup, for the quite inactive Gmail account:

C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\n066c9x0.default-release-1\ImapMail\imap.gmail.com

In my centurylink.net account, there is in the profile, under Mail, a folder pop.centurylink.net.

[tanstaafl]

Both of those seem to be normal local directory settings.

[John Liebson]

Both of those seem to be normal local directory settings.

Based on the example you posted, I thought that my setup was correct. What is not correct, of course, is what is removing my emails, especially a week or two after I reinstalled and set up Tb.

[tanstaafl]

"Four of the five folders/subfolders that had all of their contents removed at some unknown date have had this disaster repeated."

Are they all in the same account?
The folders/child folders still exist, they're just empty?
Did you try repairing the folders (repair folder button in folders properties, in the folder pane)
Do the empty folders/child folders have a zero size mbox file?
Any pattern as to which folders/child folders are empty? Same ones as last time?

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Empty_folders gives you any ideas.

[John Liebson]

"Four of the five folders/subfolders that had all of their contents removed at some unknown date have had this disaster repeated."

Are they all in the same account?
The folders/child folders still exist, they're just empty?
Did you try repairing the folders (repair folder button in folders properties, in the folder pane)
Do the empty folders/child folders have a zero size mbox file?
Any pattern as to which folders/child folders are empty? Same ones as last time?

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Empty_folders gives you any ideas.

All the folders are in jliebson@centurylink.net

I have tried folder repair on all folders in question more than one with no change.

I do not see any mbox file, so I don't know if they are of zero size. If they exist, where would I find them.

Five originally, of which four are now empty again. I just noticed that the fifth has one file, dated 5/19/2021; not certain if this folder lost all entries and I then entered the one file that is there. I would not have gone into the folder, just moved the email to it, as it serves as a filing folder for an incoming file every two weeks.

I've bookmarked the .kb file, which I will peruse later. I'm just now starting my usual morning computing, some five hours or so later; earlier time spent finishing installing a new printer, setting up toner replenishment, etc. That was somewhat better than the Christmas morning I responded to a fire call, abandoning a very young son and his mom.

[DanRaisch]

I do not see any mbox file, so I don't know if they are of zero size. If they exist, where would I find them.

John, the mbox files will have the same name as the folder that they represent and will have no file name extension. Thus if the Sent folder is involved, the file name will be Sent, with no extension. There would also be a file named Sent .msf with this second file being a "message summary file", sort of and index of the message file.

[John Liebson]

I do not see any mbox file, so I don't know if they are of zero size. If they exist, where would I find them.

John, the mbox files will have the same name as the folder that they represent and will have no file name extension. Thus if the Sent folder is involved, the file name will be Sent, with no extension. There would also be a file named Sent .msf with this second file being a "message summary file", sort of and index of the message file.

Three have a zero, two have a non-zero, one because I put a file there recently, the other as the person involved contacted me a few days ago. Before that, several days ago, all folders had mbox contents of zero, if it is mathematically or physically to have such a thing.

[tanstaafl]

As an experiment after you restore the contents of your empty folders from your backup, try copying those folders to the "Local Folders" special account and next time one of your folders goes empty see if its counterpart in Local Folders does too.

Are you manually moving the messages to the other folders or are you using message filters to do that?

Right click on those empty folders in the folder pane, select properties, the retention policy tab and verify its set to "use my accounts settings".