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When I was migrating from Windows 7 to Ubuntu, I took my Thunderbird profile and copied it into the Thunderbird profile folder under Ubuntu. When I started Thunderbird, everything worked fine and all emails of my three email accounts could be displayed. But there occured an error with just one email account that did not affect the other two: I could not read my emails that were saved in its Inbox folder.

Now, I am able to see the list of all emails in the Inbox folder but I cannot open them. When I try to open a message, a blank page appears. Strangely enough, however, the content of these emails that cannot be displayed is still shown when I am using Thunderbird’s search functionality. Moving the emails in the Inbox folder to another folder does not help. If I do that, they are still not displayed when I click on them.

I do not know why this just happened to one out of my three accounts and why all the emails in its Inbox folder are affected but not the other ones that reside in other folders.

What might be the problem and how can it be fixed?

Nemgathos
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  • And what email account has the problem? – George Udosen Nov 28 '19 at 15:17
  • Well, does it help you if I say that it is the second one? – Nemgathos Nov 28 '19 at 15:20
  • What I mean is, is it a gmail or hotmail etc account and are the other that work? – George Udosen Nov 28 '19 at 15:23
  • The two accounts that work are a Web.de and a Gmx.de account. The one that does not work is now hosted by Host Europe. – Nemgathos Nov 28 '19 at 15:25
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    Assuming that all three accounts are IMAP, delete the profile copied over from Windows, restart TB, and setup the three accounts manually... or to prove that doing so would fix the problem, just create a new profile (thunderbird -P), and recreate the account that's having the problem, and see if it works again. – heynnema Nov 28 '19 at 15:44
  • It is a POP account. Web.de is an IMAP account and Gmx.de is a POP account as well. – Nemgathos Nov 28 '19 at 19:48

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I would suggest trying to repair the folder index (.msf) file. This file may become damaged and result in such issues.

For each profile, Thunderbird stores messages from email folders in files with the same name as the folder's name and with no file extension for example (the Inbox folder's messages are saved in a file called Inbox and the Drafts folder's messages are saved in a file called Drafts and so on ... ). These files contain the complete messages of the corresponding folder and can get very large in size and a size of a few gigabytes is not uncommon. Therefore Thunderbird relies on mail summary files or .msf to avoid slow responses due to loading messages from very large files every time it starts or the user searches for emails.

Mail summary files or .msf files are used by Thunderbird to index messages in each mail folder. These files only contain messages headers. They are smaller in size and faster to load and search.

One mail summary file exists for each folder so for example (the Inbox folder will require two files: one is to store the actual full messages which will be called Inbox and the other file which will be called Inbox.msf will contain only messages summary AKA messages headers for indexing and searching purposes).

If the mail summary file gets corrupted or missing, that is not a big deal because it does not contain the real messages but rather an index or a reference to them and it can be fixed.

If, however, the messages storage file itself gets corrupted or missing, that's a different story and emails will most likely be lost forever.

To repair the folder index .msf file, please back up your original profile first then start Thunderbird and right click on the Inbox folder of the affected email account and choose Properties from the menu. Then click on the Repair Folder button like in the image below:

enter image description here

After the repair process completes, please restart Thunderbird and check if the problem is solved.

Workaround:

If the above method does not work for you, then I would suggest a workaround using Evolution mail client. This workaround is aimed at enabling you to list and view your old inbox messages. Please follow these steps to implement this workaround:

First: If you do not have Evolution installed, you can install it by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt install evolution

Second: Start Evolution and go to File menu -> Import and you will be presented with a dialogue box like in the image below:

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Third: Click the Next button and choose Import a single file like in the image below and click the Next button again like in the image below:

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Fourth: Click on the field next to Filename to open the file browser like in the image below:

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Fifth: Brows to your email profile and find a directory named [Mail Account Name].sbd and click on it like in the image below:

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Sixth: Find the messages file named AllMail or Inbox with no extension depending on your original mail folder and double click it like in the image below:

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Seventh: Click the Next button like in the image below:

enter image description here

Eighth: Choose the destination folder and click the Next button like in the image below:

enter image description here

Ninth: Click the Apply button and wait for the operation to finish like in the images below:

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Done: Your messages should be available in Evolution mail client in good shape in the destination local folder you chose during this process.

Raffa
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  • After doing what you suggested, the index in my Inbox folder is now completely gone but my messages can still be found via the global search function of Thunderbird. But don’t worry: I have backed up everything before. – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 02:41
  • Do I have to use Evolution from then on if I am going to do this and cannot switch back to Thunderbird? Will it repair my file so that I can import it into Thunderbird? – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 14:35
  • @Nemgathos This is to rescue your old inbox. You can reset the .msf indexes of your current account in Thunderbird so it downloads new messages using this answer . Will it repair your file? yes. Will you be able to import it into Thunderbird? maybe but no guarantee as the format is different between the two clients – Raffa Dec 07 '19 at 14:42
  • @Nemgathos Please, keep backups always – Raffa Dec 07 '19 at 14:45
  • Regarding my original backup: There is no file called inbox without an extension. All other folders, however, have this file. When I tried to repair the Inbox folder with Thunderbird, a file called inbox without extension was created but I cannot import this file into Evolution. – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 16:34
  • @Nemgathos The name varies depending on what your original inbox folder was called. It could be Mail, All Mail, Old Mail or any other name. Basically all files without extensions in that folder are messages files. They usually have larger file sizes in MB or GB. The folder also contains your Sent and Draft messages and you can retrieve them as well. Look into your original backup. The inbox file in Thunderbird is probably created as a result of the repair process and most likely empty and has a very small size in bytes. – Raffa Dec 07 '19 at 16:47
  • Ok, all of this seems to be very strange. My folder is called Mail. This folder contains the mail.affectedaccount folder. This folder contains two files of all folders – except Inbox which just has one file called Inbox.msf (2.8 MB). mail.affectedaccount contains a subfolder called INBOX.sbd. There, I can find two files for Drafts and Trash, a folder called Trash.sbd and three files with 0 bytes in size (Archives.msf, Sent.msf, Templates.msf) but no file is called Inbox. – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 17:04
  • @Nemgathos It seems your Inbox message file was called Inbox and it should be in the same folder next to the Inbox.msf file. Unfortunately it seems missing! Probably it was not backed up in the first place. What you can do though is to try and import all message files you find to Evolution like Drafts and Trash and any others available to see if they contain any messages just in case you moved emails to trash somehow before back-up. – Raffa Dec 07 '19 at 17:30
  • By trying out what you suggested, I just noticed that mail.affectedaccount contains a file called Trash.msf but no Trash file. I believe that this folder was empty when I migrated from Windows 7 to Ubuntu. Importing Draft and other folders is not a problem. But they do not contain the messages of Inbox. – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 17:53
  • @Nemgathos No messages file means nothing can be done because it was not backed-up from windows correctly in the first place. I hope you still have the messages on the mail server so you can download them again. I really wish there was a back-up and I could help. – Raffa Dec 07 '19 at 18:04
  • Unfortunately, this is not the case. That’s all I have. I wonder why I can find all the contents by searching for them but that it is still impossible to access the messages regularly. Should I try importing my old emails on a Windows computer into Thunderbird? I’m afraid this will not help either. Regarding the “messages file”: Do you mean Inbox? – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 18:10
  • @Nemgathos I mean by messages file like Inbox with no extension. Regarding searching for messages and they show up, this is insignificant unless you can actually view the full body of the messages and not only the subject. If you can view the whole messages after searching for them then the Inbox file should be there somewhere in your profile and you need to expand your scope and look for it in all folders until you find it and then you can import it into Evolution. Otherwise the search results could be coming from the Inbox.msf file which contains only messages headers, – Raffa Dec 07 '19 at 18:25
  • I have finally found the Inbox file after searching for it on my external hard drive on which the original copy of the backup is stored. But I don’t know why it was not copied when I copied all files to Ubuntu. It has a size of 482 MB and contains all my emails that I can now read again! Edit your answer accordingly. I have already marked it as the best answer. – Nemgathos Dec 07 '19 at 18:46