folders with many emails, few show up...

carstenw · Post by **carstenw** » March 17th, 2004, 12:37 pm

i have just lost my windows account, but managed to salvage my email directory. the trouble is that although the folders are very large, very few of the emails within actually get displayed by thunderbird. i have opened them with notepad to verify that there are many more messages in each folder-file than appear in the application.

is there some way to recoved all the emails stored in these files? i am mostly worried about my relatively full inbox which now only displays 5 emails, some of which i had actually already moved elsewhere...

thanks in advance,

c

Jeroen p · Post by **Jeroen p** » March 17th, 2004, 12:46 pm

Delete (with Thunderbird closed) the corresponding .msf files and restart Thunderbird.

carstenw · Post by **carstenw** » March 20th, 2004, 11:13 am

hi, and thanks for answering,

no go. i had already tried this. it seems to process each folder i enter for a long time, but finds very few messages within them.

eyeballfarmer · Post by **eyeballfarmer** » March 21st, 2004, 10:03 am

Probably your old email has been selected for deletion, but the folder has not been compressed yet. Be Careful. Make sure you have a saved backup copy of your 'full' email files before doing anything, and do not compress your email folders.

There is a way to retrieve emails if they have been deleted and are no longer in the trash, but only if the folder they have been deleted from has not been compressed yet.

First, test to see if this method will work on a single email... Close TB. Navigate to the 'full' email file that is causing you headaches and open it in a text editor such as TextPad (Notepad does not have adaquate search and replace function). Now find an email that you know you can NOT see in TB, find the line: X-Mozilla-Status:, usually the third line in the email header section. if the status is 0019, it is marked for deletion. change it to 0011 and save. IF the file status is anything other thant 0011, then change it to 0011, save the file, and then open TB to see if you can now see the just modified email message.

If you can see it, congrats! you have a way out. Close TB and reopen the file in TextPad and do a search and replace for the 'X-Mozilla-Status' line:

In TextPad, press F8, select 'text', check Regular Expression, Scope is Active Document, and type 'X-Mozilla-Status: ....' in the Find What box. (The space and 4 dots are essential!). In the Replace with box, enter: 'X-Mozilla-Status: 0011. Click Replace All button. Save the file, open TB and carry on with your life.

If you have some other text editor, just figure out how to to the above, even do it manually in notepad if you have the patience.

And... if this does not fix your problem, you still have your email in one large text file format. You can fish the text out, even save binary attachements, if you have the time and inclination to do so. There also may be another way to manipulate the text file so that TB will see it. I just don't know it yet.

carstenw · Post by **carstenw** » March 24th, 2004, 1:23 am

well, that sure got me a lot of emails back. i did both my inbox and my trash. unfortunately it seems that the emails are older than the ones i lost. in fact, they seem to end at exactly the date i had answered emails up to, and after that there is nothing. i guess at this point i can count my emails as being lost. this is truly frustrating. i was a bit behind, and probably had 20-30 unanswered emails, and i won't even be able to remember who they were from. ah well, that's life.

amnon · Post by **amnon** » July 29th, 2004, 10:05 am

Thank you, eyeballfarmer!

It seems that the Delete Junk extension that adds a context menu item to delete junk deletes too much (I would assume that it uses the mozilla status wrongly).

I validated this by doing this:
1. Restore as suggested here (the deleted messages moved to a different account in their deleted state...)
2. With no messages marked as junk, use delete junk from the context menu of the junk folder.
3. Result - all messages gone.

Extra details: TB 0.7.1, configured 2 POP3 accounts, and made junk be moved by TB to the Junk folder on each account.

rothers · Post by **rothers** » July 29th, 2004, 1:10 pm

Check you haven't got something odd set in View / Messages - "last 5 days" for example

amnon · Post by **amnon** » July 29th, 2004, 1:12 pm

It was set to All, that was the first thing I checked.

amnon · Post by **amnon** » July 29th, 2004, 6:32 pm

Well, it happened again. Messages were gone after deleting junk.

This time I didn't find them marked for deletion, they seem to have gone.

No plug-in this time, just usage of the normal menu item.

I don't know what's causing it yet, I seem to have very few messages left after this happens.

I didn't compact folders and I have the automatic setting to compact folders turned off.

Any other ideas? Other than this very very annoying issue TB is great! It is really getting to know what's spam and what's not, and that's the greatest thing I can say about it.

I have to find a solution to this disappearing mail issue as it is very disturbing. HELP!

amnon · Post by **amnon** » July 29th, 2004, 6:33 pm

One more detail: My Inbox is around 250MB in size and has around 3300 messages in it. May be there's some elusive bug here?

YULSA · Post by **YULSA** » February 21st, 2005, 8:04 am

I can suggest try it...
http://www.oemailrecovery.com - Repair and recovery Outlook Express folders and emails. Undelete Outlook Express messages. Recovering and repairing Windows Address Book.
and
http://www.mail-repair.com - Repairing a damaged or corrupted Outlook Express folders ands messages.

zedascoveBR · Post by **zedascoveBR** » May 17th, 2005, 10:02 am

eyeballfarmer wrote:Probably your old email has been selected for deletion, but the folder has not been compressed yet. Be Careful. Make sure you have a saved backup copy of your 'full' email files before doing anything, and do not compress your email folders.

There is a way to retrieve emails if they have been deleted and are no longer in the trash, but only if the folder they have been deleted from has not been compressed yet.

First, test to see if this method will work on a single email... Close TB. Navigate to the 'full' email file that is causing you headaches and open it in a text editor such as TextPad (Notepad does not have adaquate search and replace function). Now find an email that you know you can NOT see in TB, find the line: X-Mozilla-Status:, usually the third line in the email header section. if the status is 0019, it is marked for deletion. change it to 0011 and save. IF the file status is anything other thant 0011, then change it to 0011, save the file, and then open TB to see if you can now see the just modified email message.

If you can see it, congrats! you have a way out. Close TB and reopen the file in TextPad and do a search and replace for the 'X-Mozilla-Status' line:

In TextPad, press F8, select 'text', check Regular Expression, Scope is Active Document, and type 'X-Mozilla-Status: ....' in the Find What box. (The space and 4 dots are essential!). In the Replace with box, enter: 'X-Mozilla-Status: 0011. Click Replace All button. Save the file, open TB and carry on with your life.

If you have some other text editor, just figure out how to to the above, even do it manually in notepad if you have the patience.

And... if this does not fix your problem, you still have your email in one large text file format. You can fish the text out, even save binary attachements, if you have the time and inclination to do so. There also may be another way to manipulate the text file so that TB will see it. I just don't know it yet.

Hi, and MANY thx. I´ve get all my mails back and his working almostly complete, i JUST need to get access to the attached files of this mails.

so this is it.
i get my mails back but the attached files doesn´t work.

if someone can helpme. thx in advance. (if cant, thx too)

HetHert · Post by **HetHert** » March 12th, 2006, 8:47 pm

Please if anyone can help- I'm getting a migraine just trying to figure this out. My attorney for an important Federal case- really messed up my case. I just dismissed him from my case. We communicated in a series of replied e-mails. One very important sent reply, was created & sent 2 days ago. It did kind of "morph when I sent it. It was as though it sent in html & saved to the folder in plain text- just some strange spacing, letters & symbols mixed in- that's ok for now.
The problem is after viewing it a few times yesterday-it disappeared when I started Thunderbird today. I was looking for it to print a copy, & it is gone! I'm almost in tears! I really need a copy of this letter-nothing else is missing from this folder. I did notice when I replied instead of doing another "RE:" as in RE:RE: it only seemed to retain the original, it did not add one. While in the sent folder-they both had the same exact subject name- but different dates. Only the original is still there- an entirely different reply. What happened to this? Is there any way to retrieve this- without being a rocket scientist? Thanks so much- really appreciate any good suggestions. 8-((

Post by **Daifne** » March 12th, 2006, 8:59 pm

Please start a new topic rather than dragging up a two year old one. Someone will help you in your new topic. Thank you.

folders with many emails, few show up...

folders with many emails, few show up...

reparing corrupted Outlook Express

I have one very important "sent" e-mail missing- P