How to retrieve "Deleted" email messages (Mac)

[Wi-Fido]

Greetings
I Come In Peace
Take Me To Yer Leader

I am a computer “First Grader” [beginner], I do not know a lot of technical computer language > So if I use the wrong terminology [in asking for your help and advice] that is the reason > If you could please [in your answer] explain the process [to fix the problem and resolve my issues] in basic terms > I will be extremely grateful > Sometimes I will use words/terms, I've learned from reading posts on the Help Forums, that I notice that Computer Gurus ask people ….so to better explain our computer difficulties > “To Help You > Help Us”, resolve our problems.

Today [by mistake] I thought [by accidental discovery] I finally figured out how to delete more than one email message at a time…Instead I Deleted EVERY EMAIL that I have ever saved going back four years. Oh Godzilla no…. !!!

Thus my reason of following the Yellow Brick Road so I can ask of the Great Wizards of mOZilla Thunderbird ….How I can get back “All My Deleted Emails” [lost knowledge > “If I Only Had a [computer] Brain”

I have an older Mac [10.3.9] > So I still use “Firefox 2/Thunderbird” program >
Not quite sure what this means… but I know my email setting for receiving mail is setup as a POP server

I receive email to ** e-mail address removed by moderator ** > SBC [my phone/internet provider] does not allow for an upgraded version of Safari > because Mac 10.3.9 is “unsupported” > So my email goes [to what SBC calls] “Classic Mail” inbox > Which in turn sends it to my Thunderbird inbox. > I can “manage” my Safari emails “delete, save” etc….without it affecting my Thunderbird email messages

In my Safari email program there are five email options > INBOX, DRAFTS, SENT SPAM and TRASH > so even if I mistakenly delete an email message > It ends up in the TRASH [so unless I empty the TRASH] It can always be retrieved > By moving it from the TRASH > Back into my INBOX

But in my Thunderbird email program there are only four options > INBOX, UNSENT, DRAFTS and SENT > “There is Not” an option for TRASH [that is visible] So if by mistake.. I delete an email message > Where does it go ?

Today when I read over the Help Forums [about retrieving deleted emails] much of the advice discusses the “Trash Folder” and something about “compacting” > As I’ve stated I do not have a Trash option [that I can see] so what do I do ?

I think because my emails come first to Safari before coming to Thunderbird there is always a 15 second delay when I want to delete messages [I have never figured out how to delete more than “one at a time’ and if they have “Large Attachments” it can take several minutes > So sometimes when I’m “Robo” Deleting [automatically/quickly hitting the delete key] > Messages up the queue get deleted [that I did not want to delete] > Even thou I’ve tried using the Edit function “Undo Deleted Message” [nothing happens/does not work]

What happened today was this….I had not looked at my email inbox… in several days and there were several hundred emails to delete [also another thing I do not understand] when I mark messages as JUNK [green symbol] why do they continue to come into my inbox > instead of getting filtered out into a separate spam folder ?

It is very time consuming to have to delete the same spam email “over and over again” [I do not get why “marking them as junk” > does not end this]

Today was a different problem > Email messages “Would Not Delete” [either by using my cursor on the “Delete” in the Toolbar or from “Pressing Delete” on my keyboard > I forget what happened [in what order] “Next” > I was looking for different “Toolbar Functions” [this is how I learn how to work the computer….randomly seeing what some of them might do…. to help me delete the messages]
When all of a sudden 20 email messages were “highlighted/selected” [with purple color] > Wow Bingo !!! How did that happen ? [Believing…. I had finally discovered] how to “Delete Several Email Messages At Once [time saving]>
So I looked over them [making sure none were important] and clicked my mouse ... nothing happened…. I did it again ……nothing happened > Then I saw that manually, you could press the letter “Z” key + “alt” key [at the same time] nothing happened…did it again….nothing happened and then all of a sudden every message [that I could see within my monitor screen] was “highlighted/selected” and THEN…… Every Email Going Back Four years Vanished !!!! I Am Devastated

Breakthrough maybe…..Just now [I type/compose slow] I have been working on this posting for six hours > I was checking to see if my emails had “magically reappeared” and inadvertently, I put the cursor on the “File” option and I saw “For the First Time” > COMPACT FOLDERS and underneath that EMPTY TRASH
But still…. I Can Not Find the TRASH

Maybe once I FIND the TRASH... I will FIND… All My “Vanished/Deleted” Emails

I had an Email Disaster/Catastrophe…. with Thunderbird before …. [End of Last Year] > When 500 “Very Important Emails” [400 “Tagged”] invoices disappeared [December 28 2010] > I woke up that morning and they were gone > I posted my dilemma on the Help Forums asking for salvation [I got two answers] with one > I found every email [going back four years] that I had “Deleted on Purpose” [about 23,800] > After spending over a month going through all of them and deleting them “one by one” > Looking for the ” Very Important Disappeared Emails” [wore me out] > Thou Not One of the ‘Disappeared” Emails [That I Needed Were In There] and not finding them has been a real obstacle for me

That has/was an extremely frustrating experience and made me want to have someplace to “Save All Future Important Emails” [in a separate folder] > So If it ever happened again, like it has …I would not have to repeat this “Hellish Experience !!!

My Safari email program has the option [for saving important emails] and of easily naming the separate folders that they go in [which I should have been doing] plus the Safari email program is very easy to use [for beginners] > The “Major Reason” I do not use it is because, It Won’t Let Me “Send” Emails > Thou I going to start using it from now on [for that function]

Anyone That Can Help Me I Am Very Thankful

This Old Dog Is Ready To Learn Some New Tricks

Bow Wow

Wi-Fido

[DanRaisch]

1. Safari is not an email program, it is a web browser. That suggests that you are accessing the web mail page of your email provider when you say that you are using Safari to access your email.

2. Creating an email account in Thunderbird (that is, giving Thunderbird the information it needs to access an email account that already exists with your email provider) will automatically create a Trash folder. That means that one should be present in your Thunderbird set up. To help us understand why you are not seeing that folder, please post a screen shot of what you are seeing in Thunderbird. == http://kb.mozillazine.org/Posting_a_scr ... _the_forum

3. Try to manually recover the message:

* - 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 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
* - Delete the file with the same name and the extension .msf
* - Open the file without extension with a text editor)
* - Locate the messages that were unintentionally deleted
* - Change the status (X-Mozilla-Status) to all zeros
* - Save that file
* - Restart Thunderbird