Messages disappeared from Thunderbird

[Jerry Feldman]

On 12/17/2010 02:40 PM, Konstantin Svist wrote:
> ..right in front of my eyes, as my fingers were resting on the keyboard!
>
> I selected several messages in my Inbox, planning to move them to 
> another folder... my fingers were resting on ctrl/alt/shift area (left) 
> and arrow keys (right). Suddenly the selected messages disappeared as if 
> I pressed Shift+Delete
>
> I've already checked Archives and searched entire Local Folders -- those 
> messages are gone
>
>
> What the hell could've happened?
>
A couple of things. First, is your inbox IMAP or POP3, or do you have a
SPAM filter set, or other automatic filters, or possibly your index is
corrupt. Your inbox is composed of two file, Inbox and Inbox.msf. The
Inbox is the place where the email is stored. When you receive an email,
that email is added to the end of Inbox. When you delete an email, the
email is just marked as delete, it is not physically removed until you
compact the file. The Inbox.msf is an index, and this is where you see
the files in Thunderbird. You can physically delete the msf file, but I
would do this when thunderbird is not running. The restart Thunderbird.
If you have not compacted in a while it might be useful to do this. WRT:
IMAP/POP3. With POP3, when you retrieve your email from the server it is
physically downloaded to your system and deleted from the server, but
with IMAP, your email will remain on the server until you either delete
it or move it to another folder.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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