All mails disappeared

[Teo72]

Hi all,
thank you for allowing me here.

I am writing as an accident happened to me a few months ago and I would like others to know about it..
I used Mozilla Thunderbird for about 4-5 years and everything worked like a charm
I took no back up since I had my mails stored both on the server and in local
This January I had about 18 GB of mail archived in my local and in my server
One day, for an unknown reason, Thunderbird started deleting all my Emails one by one.
I still do not know what caused this to happen but after a few minutes most of my mails were gone
I checked in the server (Godaddy) and I found out my mails were gone there as well
In short, I lost about 4 years of Emails
I tried to contact Godaddy to see whether there was a copy somewhere of my files, but no

If you are using Thunderbird I advise you to take a regular backup

Regards,
Teo

[DanRaisch]

Moving from Firefox General to Thunderbird Support.

I sounds as though you had that email account set up as an IMAP type account, meaning that the messages are actually stored on the server with local copies available for when no network connection is available. If the provider or the user deletes a message from the server (either through Thunderbird or by accessing the email using a browser) the message will also be deleted from the account folder in Thunderbird.

To separate messages you wish to preserve from that connection to the server, such messages can be copied or moved from the account folders to sub-folders of Thunderbird's Local Folders pseudo-account. Deleting a message from the server would NOT impact the same message moved or copied to that Local Folders structure.

[Teo72]

Moving from Firefox General to Thunderbird Support.

I sounds as though you had that email account set up as an IMAP type account, mean that the messages are actually stored on the server with local copies available for when no network connection is available. If the provider or the user deletes a message from the server (either through Thunderbird or by accessing the email using a browser) the message will also be deleted from the account folder in Thunderbird.

To separate messages you wish to preserve from that connection to the server, such messages can be copied or moved from the account folders to sub-folders of Thunderbird's Local Folders pseudo-account. Deleting a message from the server would NOT impact the same message moved or copied to that Local Folders structure.

Thank you and sorry for the double post
I did not delete any mail from the server and I do not understand how can Thunderbird have deleted the mails from the server
Surely something happened and triggered this mass deletion
But I did not do anything wrong, AFAIR

[DanRaisch]

How is the account set up, as POP or IMAP? In Thunderbird the menu path is Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.

If IMAP, it's possible that something occurred on the server side that resulted in the loss of that data.

[Teo72]

How is the account set up, as POP or IMAP? In Thunderbird the menu path is Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.

If IMAP, it's possible that something occurred on the server side that resulted in the loss of that data.

I dont remember, honestly.
But I do not recall having done anything on the server for this problem to happen

[DanRaisch]

I dont remember, honestly.

We can't provide any more assistance without knowing the answers to the question I posted above. Please use the menu path to determine how that account was set up.

[Teo72]

Hi
I have disinstalled Thunderbird long ago and now I am using another mail client
So I cant say anything about the configuration
I did not touch the server configuration so I dont know how the problem may have originated there
Server is Godaddy
There seems to be a misunderstanding here, sorry for that.
I was not requiring any assistance, it is too late to recover my mails
I just wanted to let the users know that there is such a problem for other people to know

Regards,
Teo

[DanRaisch]

OK, that is now clear. Please understand that what you experienced has not been reported by many other users. My experience would suggest that the problem was not caused by the program itself but that other factors were involved.

[Teo72]

Understood

[LIMPET235]

@ Tekram...
I split your post off to here, as this thread is very old & requires a long rest.
> viewtopic.php?f=39&t=3113875

Thank you.



Locking.