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Thunderbird deleted all my emails and placed 300 files on my desktop. Why did this happen and how can I recover my lost messages?

  • 4 replies
  • 5 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Sander G.

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I was checking my emails as normal and after trying to open an unread message, all emails were deleted from my inbox. At the end of this process approximately 300 files with names like 'QxxzBx z.html.pX10aRdGp.html.part' were placed on my desktop. How can I recover my emails and make sure this problem does not happen again?

I am using Thunderbird version 24.4.0 with Mac OS X 10.9.2

I was checking my emails as normal and after trying to open an unread message, all emails were deleted from my inbox. At the end of this process approximately 300 files with names like 'QxxzBx z.html.pX10aRdGp.html.part' were placed on my desktop. How can I recover my emails and make sure this problem does not happen again? I am using Thunderbird version 24.4.0 with Mac OS X 10.9.2

Chosen solution

I hope it does not happen again. As a test, perhaps you could select some messages and drag them to your desktop, to see if this reproduces the behaviour. Of course we don't know why it happened, but it might help to understand if this is indeed what happened.

Glad you could at least undelete them, Adam!

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Could it be that you accidentally dragged all of your messages to the desktop?

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I suppose it is possible, but I didn't have any messages selected and can't seem to repeat what happened by dragging messages to the desktop.

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I managed to recover my messages by accessing my email via webmail and undeleting everything (about 3000 messages). The only remaining problem is that all messages now appear as 'read' and I have no idea what is unread.

I still don't know how this happened, though.

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Chosen Solution

I hope it does not happen again. As a test, perhaps you could select some messages and drag them to your desktop, to see if this reproduces the behaviour. Of course we don't know why it happened, but it might help to understand if this is indeed what happened.

Glad you could at least undelete them, Adam!