Thunderbird e-mail problem

[Xandros Pilosa]

GaryT pravi:
--snip--
> No, the backup was a copy of the entire .mozilla-thunderbird directory.
> I've done this before and it worked perfectly well the first time.
> 
>> Did you create your mail accounts from scratch....?
> 
> Well... yes. but only when TB didn't read and use my original files.
> I ended up making replacement accounts. An annoying, time consuming
> task.  Of course now I have two sets of everything.

> Where the old one was named (say)   mailboxGT
> Thunderbird named the new one as:   mailboxGT-1

One way to retrieve your mail (just mail and from the new profile with 
accounts you recreated) is to go to the relevant account settings and 
set the path for the local folder to mailboxGT

if the folder in tb stays empty try to delete "mailboxGT.msf" file 
(close tb first) or other suggestion from: 
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Inbox_stays_blank

Sorry I was not able to help.
I can give you just few more suggestions:

Usually I take this way to migrate profiles (maybe redundant, but it 
usually works): I start the tb, let it to create brand new profile, then 
close tb., then cp old profile xxxold.default to .mozilla-thunderbird 
folder then edit profiles.ini file in that dir (section Path=) to 
reflect the name of xxxold.default profile (make a backup copy of that 
file first), save and restart tb.

> I'm going to keep
> these few new mail files separately, completely uninstall TB and start
> again from scratch keeping lots of screen dumps to compare results.


There is no need to reinstall tb.
Since you already remade new account and assuming you don't want to do 
it again, you can:
just rename .mozilla-thunderbird dir to someting else, let say 
.mozilla-thunderbird.old --> start thunderbird --> cancel at the account 
wizard dialogue --> close tb The .mozilla-thunderbird folder should be 
recreated with clean new profile in it. --> copy profile folder for ex. 
xxxbackup.default from your backup-->edit profiles.ini file section 
Path=xxxbackup.default save and restart tb. and you can safely 
troubleshoot your old profile.
If you fail, you can delete new .mozilla-thunderbird dir and rename 
.mozilla.thunderbird.old to its original name and you are where you started.

When troubleshooting old profile you may use some other relevant links 
from kb.mozilla:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Thunderbird
and especially:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_missing_profile
see sections "Is your profile intact?" , "Recovering data from your old 
profile" and "Corrupt or empty prefs.js"
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Thunderbird

I am sure, you can sort it out one way or another and recover your mail 
at least.

Regards