Post: how to restore emails deleted by mistake in Thunderbird? Three methods

Let's start with our mailbox. In the past, we used the mail client Outlook Express (OE) to receive emails from our company's mailbox. At home, we used the Web to access free mailboxes like MSN, Sina, Tom, and Gmail. However, the anti-spam function of Tom mail is really poor, and there are many advertisements on the interface. Sina's Web mailbox interface does not support Firefox, but the advertisement supports well and the cookie is also garbled; the access speed of MSN is slow. Just click the mouse and wait a few seconds. Then click the mouse and wait a few seconds. I can't stand it anymore. I just wanted to use the pop client to receive emails. I 've been using Firefox all the time, so I 'd just try out the Thunderbird with kinship at home. After installing the webmail plug-in, all emails except Gmail are received, including QQ, so that Tecent Messenger (TM) will always prompt for new emails, but all emails are spam, by the way, we will test the anti-spam function of Thunderbird. If you don't have Gmail, you can continue to use the web interface and functions.

Setting Thunderbird to delete junk mails that have been used for more than two days is usually good. However, after four days of this business trip, I came back and watched 10 emails, which automatically changed to "junk ", then it is automatically deleted immediately. At that time, I was worried that some important emails were mistakenly deleted as spam.

A burst of Google and Yahoo searches on the Internet showed the Chinese results returned. It is estimated that there is no hope. I try again "Thunderbird recover" and "Thunderbird Delete", and I think of the doscommand, I tried "Thunderbird undelete", haha ......

Let's get down to the truth. Here we are going to talk about the relevant English materials clearly. Just do it step by step. I use the Chinese version of Thunderbird 1.5 and POP account. I have used these three methods to restore emails.

Below I will explain some of them. Most people should use Pop accounts. I will only talk about restoring emails under pop accounts. I have not tried IMAP.

As long as the folder in the mailbox is not compressed, the so-called delete mail is not physically deleted, but they only hide the mail visually, the email is deleted by modifying the flag of the X-mozilla-status message header. If the waste bin is not cleared, you can recover it from the waste bin. Otherwise, Thunderbird does not provide a proper solution. However, as long as you do not compress the mailbox folder, it is still possible to restore the mail.

You have three methods for recovery. Which one is the most suitable? It depends on how many emails you need to restore and your technical skills. Before using the three methods, you should first find the text files used to store emails, which are called mbox files, such as Inbox, sent, trash, and junk, corresponding to "inbox", "sent message", "waste bin", and "garbage" respectively ". Mbox files have no suffixes and no extensions. These mbox files are stored in the Personal Configuration folder. If you are using Windows, the Personal Configuration folder may be hidden, select "Tools"> "Folder Options"> "View"> "show all files and folders" in resource manager.

The following is an example of how to find the mbox file "inbox", which is a common "inbox". Suppose you want to restore emails in your Gmail account under Windows XP, your Windows XP Account Name Is eranos

1. find your Personal Configuration folder, which is usually located in C: "Documents and Settings" eranos "applicationdata" Thunderbird "profiles" XXXXXXX. default? Xxxxxxx here is a random combination of numbers and letters ).

2. Enter the mail folder.

2.5 you may have changed the email storage location of Thunderbird like me, so you should remember where you saved it and find it directly.

3. Go to the pop.gmail.com folder. the folder in this place is named by your email server name, and your email on this email server is in this folder. If you use the global inbox, you should enter the local folders folder here.

4. Find the "inbox" file.

5. select one of the following three methods. We recommend the X-mozilla-status message header method. You must be sure that you can edit it easily.

First, copy the corresponding text from the mbox file.

Before opening the mbox file in the editor, save another copy for backup. Each email is separated by a blank line and a line starting with "from. For example, from-wed Oct 27 11:08:59 2004, from is followed by the mail time and date. If you see a lot of unreadable characters, it may be attachments containing files or images in various formats.

When you see the text you want to restore, copy it out.

Second, directly edit the X-mozilla-status message header.

The previous section is the same as the first section of the first method.

When you see the email you want to restore, you find the X-mozilla-Status section. It looks like this X-mozilla-status: 1001. The number here is changed, no matter what the number is, change it to 0000 and save it and exit. When you open Thunderbird again, you should see an unread email.

Third, convert the mbox file to a. eml file.

Using Tools to convert mbox to. eml files does not affect mbox files. The conversion tool does not understand the format of X-mozilla-status, so it does not know that these emails have been deleted. If you are using Windows, you can download and install imapsize. Do not be intimidated by its name. You do not need an IMAP account. Select Tools-> mbox2eml, select the mbox file you want to convert in the first dialog box "choose one mbox file to convert", and set the file type) change all files to find the mbox file without a suffix. In the second dialog box "chose folder where EML files for this mbox will be saved", select the location you want to save, then click "convert" to convert.

After successful conversion, you need to open Outlook Express, drag the converted. eml file to the inbox of Outlook Express, and then select the email you want to keep and forward it to your account. With a new message header added, Thunderbird ignores the previously deleted X-mozilla-status message header.

Postscript: Ah, it's very late. It's very hard, hoping to help some friends who are worried about restoring emails. Looking back, is the security of Thunderbird worse?