Please note: You have added your name, your email address and your personal address into a public forum that is viewable by anyone anywhere in the world. You should never post that kind of personal information in any public forum as it can also be scanned by bots that scan for personal data.

That sort of information is never required. No one uses personal email nor telephones anyone etc, so if you get a telephone contact saying it is from Thunderbird or Mozilla etc then it is not legit. You will receive emails from this forum only.

Other Thunderbird users respond to requests for help and do so only via this forum. As they may be anywhere in the world then timing could be any time.

re :My computer was updated, on line by Geek Squad I presume you mean updates to OS or DELL software.

You say you are using version 78, but there are several in the 78 series and the current one is 78.11.0 so which one are you using ?

I presume 'Geek Squad' did not do any Thunderbird update. But did an update in Thunderbird occur on 6th / 7th of June ? You can this info here:

• Menu app icon > Options > General
• Under 'Updates' section - click on 'show update history'

re :agent DID find the the sub folders,but could not bring them BACK to panel. When we opened these files, you see mixed up code.

Perhaps it woud be a good idea to post some information in the form of images so that we can see what is actually stored. I'm presuming you are talking about a POP mail account, so if using IMAP then that needs a different approach.

Folder Pane Make sure all folders are expanded showing sub folders and then post image(s) so we can see what is currently visible.

In Thunderbird Help > Troubleshooting Information Click on 'Open folder'

If POP account, click on 'Mail' folder click on pop mail account name folder to see contents. Make sure you have the view to show details and window as big as you can to show as many files as possible. Post image(s)showing contents of the pop mail account.

You will have folders with *.sbd extension, and if those folders contain missing subfolders then open those .sbd folders and post image showing contents.

Please make sure that your images show the directory info so we know which folder we are looking at.

I can then compare the Folder Pane images with the pop account images to see what is going on. This is the first step. My first check is to see if you have lost mbox files and so Thunderbird has no knowledge of the *.sbd folders, therefore cannot display their contents.

I may ask for further info as needed.

Not if you have IMAP then this could be an entirely different situation.

If you have not selected all your folders to download full copies then it could explain why the person trying to help could not read the files. Anything in a *.msf file is just an index file used by Thunderbird and does not contain emails. If the mbox file does not exist then full copies were not downloaded.

Suggest you try the following to see if it gets the view back:

• Right click on imap mail account name in Folder Pane and select 'Subscribe'.
• click on 'Refresh'
• Select all the folders and subfolders you want to see and click on 'Subscribe'.
• click on 'OK'

If trying to subscribe did not allow you select required folders, then try this:

• Right click on imap mail account name in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
• Select 'Server Settings' and click on 'Advanced..' button
• uncheck the checkbox 'Show only subscribed folders'
• click on 'OK'
• Restart Thunderbird.

Now perform the 'Subscribe' action again even if you can see folders.

Also check you have the setting to view all the folders.

• Menu app icon > View > Folders > All

Note: If you want to download full copies so they can backed up then check this setting:

• Right click on imap mail account name in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
• Select 'Synchronisation & Storage'
• Select checkbox 'keep messages in all folders for this accoutn on this computer'
• click on 'Advanced'
• Make sure all folders and subfolders are selected for download
• click on OK

• Select 'Synchronise all messages locally regardless of age'

Easy way to perform a backup: In Thunderbird

• Menu app icon > Help > Troubleshooting Information
• about 8th in list - Profile Folder - click on 'Open Folder'

New window opens showing contents of 'profile name' folder

• Exit Thunderbird now - this is important.

• Go up directory 3 levels so you are in the 'Roaming' folder.
• Copy the 'Thunderbird' folder to a suitable location.

See image below as guide.

Here are the screenshots for the pop folders that are missing

The first screen shot - the scroll bar being so small tells me that there are a lot more files in that pop mail account. In fact there are 2,431 files. It is not possible for me to know if you have all the required files until you post images of them. I'm also not sure what folders you can see because you have not provided an image showing all folders in the Folder Pane in Thunderbird. However, you can check this for yourself. There should be an mbox file (no extension) and also an index file (.msf extension) for each and every *.sbd folder. The highlighted 'Sequoia Hospital.sbd' folder may contain subfolders. For Thunderbird to know about them you would need an mbox file called 'Sequoia Hospital' (no extension) and you will also see an index file called 'Sequoia Hospital.msf'.

If any *.sbd folder does not have an mbox file of exactly the same name then you will not be able to see any subfolders within the *.sbd folder. If you have this issue then it can be fixed.

What I can tell you is this: In first image, second to last file, there is an mbox file called 'AA A 4 20' (no extension) size 5kb, so this file does not contain a load of emails as the size is really small. It is a top level folder name which has subfolders because there is also a 'AA A 4 20.sbd' folder. The second image shows the contents of the 'AA A 4 20.sbd' folder - all the subfolders. However, there is only one subfolder called 'Uber ONe Beacon POlicy', (no extension) this is an mbox file - these are the files that contain emails, but it has zero size meaning it is totally empty. There are no emails in that folder. The 'date modified' tells me that this file has not had any modifications to it since september last year. So either you used an old backup created before any emails were actually put into that folder or the emails in that folder were deleted some time ago. It is also possible that Norton scanned the file at some point in past, located something it did not like and 'fixed' the file. The 'Uber ONe Beacon POlicy.msf' file is just an indexing file used by Thunderbird and index files do not contain any emails.

Please note: if you allow your Thunderbird profile files and folders to be scanned then please make sure you do not allow any 'fix' because Anti-Virus's are not able to determine that the file may contain more than one email. So it will get rid of the entire contents. It is so much easier to note what file name Norton does not like, then compact that folder name and rescan. It may be an email you have deleted long ago, but still have residual data, so compacting would remove it. Or you could save all emails in that folder as .eml files outside of Thunderbird in a folder on the desktop and then scan those individual files. It will then tell you what email is bad. So you can delete it and compact folder and then remove all those .eml files and empty computer Recycle bin. This is so much safer than letting any Anti-Virus near your files.

HI Toad-Hall Thank you you rock! My agent was able to get back my 2,plus folders, even the ones I had long ago deleted. 1) Agent imported M box files! I can open and if not I RT click and open a NEW TAB. Magic. Thank You! Sandy