Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Discussion of bugs in Seamonkey
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troothteller
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Joined: June 11th, 2012, 11:49 am

Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

At this moment I sure don't need this. I am still on version 2.49.4 on Windows 7 64-Bit. After strolling to this computer briefly to merely see what time it was, I happened to see a message in my Junk folder, which I routinely empty. My window was not fully expanded to full size. Anyway, after right-clicking on the Junk folder to empty it, another folder got highlighted and that folder got emptied. I do not understand how that happened because only Trash and Junk folders have those empty options. How do I restore those contents? I am doing a last ditch effort to do a System Restore to see what that does. My server settings show Leave Messages on Server, but neither Until I Delete Then or a time limit is checked. I probably left them as they were when I installed this version. The Repair option did nothing. Thank you in advance.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by DanRaisch »

That "Leave messages on server" option indicates that you are accessing that account as a POP type account. In turn that indicates that SeaMonkey can access only inbox folder on the server. It's not the Inbox folder that was cleared along with the Junk folder, is it?

System Restore may not be helpful as it focuses on system files and not on user data files. You can try it but may not find it successful in recovering your messages.

Performing the "Repair" function on that second, non-Junk folder may have made it more difficult or even impossible to recover the messages from the folder. Never the less, try closing SeaMonkey and deleting the .msf file that has the same file name as the folder from which the messages were cleared. Then restart SeaMonkey and see if the lost messages are present.
troothteller
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

DanRaisch, no it was not the Inbox folder, but a folder below Junk. System Restore did not work, as you anticipated. I will try your suggestion. Thank you for your prompt reply.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by DanRaisch »

Good luck.

You might also try to manually recover the messages:

* - Turn off Thunderbird and do not compact
* - Locate the file containing the message (same name as the folder in Thunderbird, no extension) in your profile
* - Delete the file with the same name and the extension .msf
* - Open the file without extension with Notepad (or another text editor)
* - Locate the messages that were unintentionally deleted
* - Change the status (X-Mozilla-Status) to all zero
* - Save that file
* - Restart Thunderbird
troothteller
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

DanRaisch, I haven't does anything yet, too busy running malware scans. However, this is SeaMonkey, not Thunderbird. I don't know if that matters. We'll go with the first step before we try the second.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by DanRaisch »

As far as the suggested procedures go, just switch the program names but the file names and status values are the same for SeaMonkey and Thunderbird.
troothteller
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

DanRaisch, I just learned from a September 20, 2019 post that the moderator who started this forum can no longer continue. That is too bad. Running technical support from here must take a long learning process. I hope you all find a way to keep it going. Coming here is better than using the newsgroups. I just implemented your first set of suggestions. Now that SeaMonkey Mail is open, it is doing some kind of busy thing with the twirling cursor; but no messages in the folder where I accidentally deleted them.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by DanRaisch »

Thunderbird should be rebuilding the .msf file associated with the folder that contained the unintentionally deleted messages. What is the size (at the OS level) of the file with the name of the folder and having no file name extension?
troothteller
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

DanRaisch, there must have been over 100 messages although I do not know what size file. However, what is this X-Mozilla-Status?
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DanRaisch
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by DanRaisch »

It's a part of the message header in Thunderbird (the data the program uses to work with the messages). One value in that status indicates the message is deleted (not displayed but not yet erased) in Thunderbird. Editing the file as described above and changing that value to all zeros will indicate the message is NOT deleted at which point it would be displayed in Thunderbird, assuming the information relating to the message is still present in the file.
troothteller
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

Voilà! They are all back, something like 1872 messages, about 722 brand new. That second method of manually recovery was tedious; but it worked. Thanks.
LordOfTheBored
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by LordOfTheBored »

Glad to hear it. I've suffered the lost mail curse before(though I don't keep nearly that many), and it is no fun.
troothteller
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Re: Accidental Folder Contents Lost

Post by troothteller »

Now, what's going to happen to this site? Is there any way to keep it going? Techs are going to be difficult to train. The newsgroups have nasty participants, which is why I did not stay registered. Thanks again.
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