A Thunderbird lost folder oddity and a solution to fix it

[techAdmin]

If you're looking in 'Local Folders', and you see 'Inbox' and 'Inbox.msf' and both, or one of those, are empty, especially in 'inbox' is size 0, then what has probably happened is that you had a virus in it, and your antivirus program got rid of the whole file when it scanned it, or when a virus entered it.

That's my first guess. This would depend on your antivirus configuration. If it's set to 'always delete' files, and if this is what happened, then your file is gone. If it's set to 'quarantine' the infected file, then the inbox is in your antivirus quarantine file. All you have to do is restore, after turning off your antivirus, then remove the virus email from it, close and restart thunderbird, and restart the antivirus.

That's assuming that's what's happened. It could be other things too, but that's the most likely.

This happened to me on an early thunderbird version, 1.0, but that's since been fixed, so it also depends on which thunderbird version you're running.

Just as a matter of good practice, leaving all your emails in your inbox is not a good idea, for reasons like this.

[smi]

Thank you for your advice. Had my antivirus set to delete, so I guess they are gone. I'll learn to live without them.

[techAdmin]

This was a bigger problem on earlier thunderbirds, so if you haven't already done so, make sure to keep your thunderbird updated. It's currently on 1.5.

I would guess that you may have had an earlier version. It also depends on your antivirus version, I haven't heard this problem appearing for a while, so it's possible you have an antivirus that doesn't treat the msf files and the thunderbird email files the same way it treats outlook express/outlook email files.

But in any case, setting the antivirus to 'quarantine', then not keeping all your emails in your inbox will help with these issues in the future. I use my inbox as, well, as my inbox, and I file everything away in folders when it's processed.

Plus of course, backup, always, for home users, at least 1 time per month, ideally 2 times, backup at least your critical user data, if not the entire system.