Thunderbird - Correct the Issue of Missing Emails in Folders

 

Update:

Well I thought that worked until I got a new email on my phone and no matter what I did I could not see the new message in Thunderbird v102.2.2.

I have since rolled back to v91.13.0 and disabled automatic updates until this is resolved.

Intro:

I kept seeing the wrong "Correspondent" in my sent mailbox paired with an email. It is sporadic however annoying. There's only like 200 emails in this particular mailbox. I tried repairing the folder multiple times and I still could not get it to correct itself. I got fed up and resorted to wiping the profile folder and starting over fresh.

However I seem to have found a less destructive fix for this, but since I do not code it wouldn't make much sense for me to waste time looking through the code to find the actual issue.

Also I posted this to Reddit and Mozilla's bug tracker over a month ago and it's still unresolved. The ones who did just suggested repairing the folder in question from within Thunderbird, which did not work.

Profile Location:

The profiles are kept in the following folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\

Solution:

First you need to identify which mailbox folder is having the issue.

You can try to repair it (right click on main mailbox folder, ie, Inbox, Drafts, or Sent, click properties, and under the "General Information" tab in the pop up, click, "Repair Folder"). If you've landed on this article then it's a safe bet that "Repair Folder" didn't work.

Once you've identified which folder is having the issue you need to navigate to this folder:

%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\Random-Characters-Go-Here.default\ImapMail\imap-mail.yourmailhost.com\

Let's assume the Sent folder is having issues such as displaying the correct subject line but with the wrong correspondent being show in line for that email.

• Inside of "imap-mail.yourmailhost.com" you will see two files with the same name but different extensions. One will be "Sent" without an extension and the other will be "Sent.msf". From what I understand, the ".msf" files is the database file for the Sent mail folder.

• Make sure Thunderbird is closed. Then delete the "Sent.msf" file.

If you see two Sent ".msf" files with a "-1" or "-2" after them follow this:

• One will be named, "Sent.msf" and the other "Sent-1.msf". You need to go and look at the file size of the actual "Sent" and "Sent-1" files. Whichever one is significantly larger, find the corresponding ".msf" file and delete it.

• Launch Thunderbird and when you click on the Sent folder you will see that it starts rebuilding itself and grabbing mail from the IMAP server.

Conclusion:

The issue should now be resolved. You can do this for any number of corresponding ".msf" files.

👽