I use BT and like AOL and Verizon, Yahoo is the server. In my webmail, I have to select folders to be allowed to be shown in IMAP. Perhaps you also have a webmail setting where you have to select which folders can be seen in IMAP.

You could also try this:

• right click on imap mail account in Folder Pane and select 'Settings'
• select 'Server Settings'
• click on 'Advanced' button
• uncheck checkbox 'show only subscribed folders'
• click on OK
• click on OK

Then see what is available in the 'Subscribe' list.

Thanks for responding, but the, even though all those companies are under one roof, so to speak, they all have different interfaces and AOL doesn't have any webmail settings to allow custom folders to be read by an e-mail client.

I also tried changing the Advanced server settings, but that didn't put things back to normal either.

check you have the setting to see all folders.

Menu icon > Folders > All

I'm using the desktop version, not a phone app, but I have that under View>Folders, and yes, I already have "All" selected.

Chaz....did you ever get that fixed? My email folders all disappeared too. As of Dec. 20, 2018. I can see them in AOL online, but not in Thunderbird. I created a new folder in TB to 'start over' and it did not show up in TB, but DID show up online AOL. A day later, it showed up on my TB. So frustrating. I don't want to recreate all my folders again!

You do not need to recreate folders if they already exist on server, but you may need to subscribe to see them.

They do not show up in the list that pops up in the subscribe box. I have no way to access them.

chick.merkel So did you do what was advised in the very first comment I posted in this forum, to alter the Advanced settings in Account Settings ? if yes then post an image showing the setting.

Yes, I did. I also reinstalled TB, refreshed the folders, and subscribed, unsubscribed, rebooted my computer, etc. 1st pic is the setting. 2nd is what's available in subscribe. 3rd shows a small number of my numerous folders if I log into aol.com online. I'm at a total loss as to what to do now.

chick.merkel said

Chaz....did you ever get that fixed? My email folders all disappeared too. As of Dec. 20, 2018. I can see them in AOL online, but not in Thunderbird. I created a new folder in TB to 'start over' and it did not show up in TB, but DID show up online AOL. A day later, it showed up on my TB. So frustrating. I don't want to recreate all my folders again!

Chick, I think that AOL is changing servers or something. I have an aim.com account and I had to change all my server settings over to "aol" from "aim" and then I found all my e-mails completely unsorted, but none of them would download because they were all marked "Read."

As I had over two dozen folders and thousands of e-mails, I had to repeat the following process over an over for a one or two folders at a time. It took at least a couple of hours.

I then had to create all new folders on TB with slightly different names than my pre-existing folders and re-direct my filters to the new folders. Next, I l shut down and rebooted TB to get my new folders to show up. Sometimes it took a couple minutes for the new folder to show up. Then I would login to my aim.com account on the web and mark e-mails as "Unread." TB would then see all the unread e-mails, download them and sort them into the new folders. Once ALL the e-mail were downloaded and sorted into the new folders, I deleted the old folders and renamed some of thew ones to match the old folder names. I still have to restart TB after adding a new folder to get it to show up. After this, I almost switched over to gmail, but they system is a ridiculous exercise on redundancy.

On the upside, this forced me to delete a bunch of old e-mails and associated filters that weren't needed any more.