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mail folders lost

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Loekie Ratelkous

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Aug 10, 2007, 5:10:01 AM8/10/07
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Hello,

I was rearranging a tree of quite important mail folders, but I have
lost them.
I seem to remember that I should delete some indexes to be rebuilt
on start-up, but I don't remember the extension.

I did NOT delete them, but drag&drop failed. I connect that to time
delays of my keyboard due to malicious behaviour of a part of a
firewall package, that could only partly be uninstalled.

What to do?

Loek

Peter Potamus the Purple Hippo

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Aug 10, 2007, 12:26:45 PM8/10/07
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Loekie Ratelkous wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was rearranging a tree of quite important mail folders, but I have
> lost them.
> I seem to remember that I should delete some indexes to be rebuilt
> on start-up, but I don't remember the extension.

*.msf

> I did NOT delete them, but drag&drop failed.

that might explain why you got all the tmprules*.dat files.

--
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only. And only click on the Reply button, not the Reply All
or Reply to Author. Thanks!

Peter Potamus & His Magic Flying Balloon:
http://www.toonopedia.com/potamus.htm

Nir

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Aug 10, 2007, 12:23:58 PM8/10/07
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First Back up your Thunderbird profile folder
["http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird"]

Now delete all .msf files from Mail folder when Thunderbird is not running.
Start Thunderbird .
Do those folders reappear ?

Loekie Ratelkous

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Aug 10, 2007, 7:13:00 PM8/10/07
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Peter Potamus the Purple Hippo schreef:

> Loekie Ratelkous wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was rearranging a tree of quite important mail folders, but I have
>> lost them.
>> I seem to remember that I should delete some indexes to be rebuilt on
>> start-up, but I don't remember the extension.
>
> *.msf

OK. Tonight I sat down to try.
But to no avail. When I delete an .msf file, it is recreated on
start of TB. it does not improve the visibility of the contents.
If within TB I create a new folder and copy a mail into it, I cannot
find it back using W Explorer.

But the expected contents of the empty folder still is visible

>
>> I did NOT delete them, but drag&drop failed.
>
> that might explain why you got all the tmprules*.dat files.

I fail to see what mechanism might be behind this. But I am less
concerned about unexplained folders, when folders that I want to
access are not accessible.

Any more idea's?

--
Loek

Loekie Ratelkous

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Aug 10, 2007, 7:15:03 PM8/10/07
to
Nir schreef:
All? On all levels?
Is only around the folders + mails that dissappears not enough?

--
Loek

Peter Potamus the Purple Hippo

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Aug 11, 2007, 1:25:32 AM8/11/07
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Loekie Ratelkous wrote:
> Peter Potamus the Purple Hippo schreef:
>> Loekie Ratelkous wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I was rearranging a tree of quite important mail folders, but I have
>>> lost them.
>>> I seem to remember that I should delete some indexes to be rebuilt on
>>> start-up, but I don't remember the extension.
>> *.msf
>
> OK. Tonight I sat down to try.
> But to no avail. When I delete an .msf file, it is recreated on
> start of TB. it does not improve the visibility of the contents.
> If within TB I create a new folder and copy a mail into it, I cannot
> find it back using W Explorer.

your messages in folders are contained within the files
without extensions, such as inbox, or sent, or draft, etc.
Messages are not contained in the *.msf files. Those files
are just indexing files. They tell the program which way
things are sorted, how its threaded, whats marked with tags,
and so forth. When you delete these files, they will be
recreated when you restart TB.

Nir

unread,
Aug 11, 2007, 8:38:02 AM8/11/07
to

Peter has already answered this question, I think .

BTW, in your Mail folder , do you find any folder , having '.sbd' in name ?

Also using windows search , can you find any of your lost messages in
profile folder ?


--
"https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311394"

Loekie Ratelkous

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Aug 12, 2007, 1:29:15 PM8/12/07
to

I am always confused by the folder structure in a TB account,
compared to what I see inside TB. That's because the extensionless
mailfile A_Company and it's index file A_Company.msf are not as one
would expext IN the folder A_Company.sbd, but next to this folder
A_Company.sbd,in the folder A.sbd

IN TB itself I have: (translated names from Ditch version. (only
some files for structure clarity)
Local Folders
Inbox
drafts
Sent mail
Junk
Trash
My_Mail_Archive (created this from the beginning)
Clients
Companies contacted
Companies Unspecified
Originally it contained:
A
abc
cde
B
...
Z
xyz
Yet another folder
tmprules.dat (no size indicated)
tmprules121.dat (80 KB (total 14, most of 80 KB)

I had split several folders in the A-level, each involving now less
company subfolders. Then I renamed "Companies unspecified" a bit,
only to get it where it now is in the list. This renaming took very
long because of all underlying folders. I don't know when I first
found out that my mails were gone.

Looking in the profile folder I see the same structure, that I now
reproduce with some things I find stange.

Local Folders (this folder without .sbd)
Inbox.sbd
drafts.sbd
Sent mail.sbd
Junk.sbd
Trash .sbd
My_Mail_Archive.sbd (created this from the beginning)
Clients.sbd
Companies contacted.sbd (folder without problems
Companies Unspecified.sbd
A.sbd (contals mail itself too)
company abc
mails
company ade
mails
A
a.msf
B.sbd (no mail expected!)
b-company
b-company.msf
B (size zero)
...
Z
company xyz
Yet another folder
tmprules.dat (no size indicated)
tmprules121.dat (80 KB (total 14, most of 80 KB)
Tmprules etc (14 times)
(THESE tmprules-FILES ARE REALLY IN THE SAME FOLDER THAT ALSO
CONTAINS Inbox.sbd)
Any tmprules.sbd caanot be found

Today I found out, that the name of the folder really was
"Companies Unspecified .sbd" (a space before the dot)
while in Thunderbird I found no trailing space at the end of the
folder name. when I removed the space, there was no difference
within TB. I added the space again.


Maybe I should try to recreate company folders within TB, and in
windows Explorer copy into them the mail files and the
subfolders.sbd that I still can see. Are there pitfall on that
path? Do's and don't's?

--
Loek

Loekie Ratelkous

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Aug 12, 2007, 3:56:29 PM8/12/07
to
Loekie Ratelkous schreef:

Miracle!

After removing the space I had restarted TB, after putting it back I
had not. But tonight I come back to the computer, start E-mail, and
gee, my mail folder tree is back...

Any explanation?

--
Loek

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