I found a link last night which may be relevant, but for some reason was locked out of this thread. The computer rebooted overnight and now I can't find the article again, but the gist of it was that a corrupt prefs_js file could cause this.

Unihide your files, browse to your Firefox profile and rename that file or any backup copies of it. You DON'T want the auto backups to load in its place as they will also be corrupt
When you reboot the machine and fire up Thunderbird a new preferences file should be created (though without any personal tweaks)

Well, I went into the profile folder. There was no pref_js file but there was a pref.js one. Double-clicking on it came up with a message suggesting that it was incorrect in some way so I added an "OLD" to the name, closed Thunderbird and restarted my computer. It dutifully created a new pref.js file at the bottom of the list of the profile folder's contents - so far, so good.

I went back to account preferences and still it does the same - appear to accept changes to the junk rules but then have forgotten those changes when I revisit each account five seconds later. I went back to the profile folder and the new pref.js file comes up as faulty when I double-click on it. While I was there I deleted the pref.jsOLD file but it made no difference.

I wonder if I can reinstall Outlook Express..... (only joking!)

I had a very bad experience with Thunderbird and perhaps I just was just unlucky or inept, but I installed it on a new machine with W7, because Outlook Express, which I liked and was used to, is not compatible with W7 and I hated WLivemail..

Thunderbird deleted all the emails which I'd put into folders. Fortunately they were still on the server so I laboriously downloaded and sorted them again only to have the same happed. So I de-installed T/bird, re-installed it, set it all up, and it happened a third time. I am now frightened to use T/bird and still on Livemail and still hate it!

Tableview, your experiences seem to be even worse than mine! I've been using Thunderbird with total satisfaction until relatively recently when there was a flurry of updates and, rightly or wrongly, I've put the new problems down to this.

I have just repeated the above exercise with the prefs file in my Thunderbird profile, only this time I deleted the earlier renamed prefs.OLD version first and then renamed the prefs.js file in the active profile in my computer's user account and did the same to the prefs file (no .js version here) in the unused profile in my admin account. To momentary alarm (!) I found that all of my e-mails had disappeared again so I restored my profile, with the exception of "Settings", with MozBackup. Everything appeared to go well. When I opened the active Thunderbird I expected to have to reset all of the account settings because I had elected not to restore them (or so I thought) but, no.... they were there exactly as before and also as before, all attempts to change them were ignored. Bl***y stupid program! How can this be?

I cannot even get mozillazine to work. It won't accept my name and password so, thinking it's a cookie thing, I allow it to set a pile of cookies whereupon it tells me that my username, my password and my e-mail address are already in use - no wonder, really, since I registered them when I used them a while ago - so I'm stuck there too.

So then I tried to report the thing to Bugzilla. They wanted to send me an e-mail to confirm registration etc. I said "Great - do it" (well, sort of!) It tried but it went to the Thunderbird Junk Abyss, which was what I wanted to report in the first place. I'll have to find someone else to report it, it seems.....!

Perhaps I should just give up and go and buy some stamps.

Personally I hate the program
I think its the one mainstream application that gives me the most heartache when dealing with customers. Where possible I wean them off it and onto Windows Live Mail (yes I know that had issues but at least its customer - proof)
If you don't want to go down the M$ route and want a decent e-mail program take a look at The Bat!
You have to pay for it, but it works
RITLabs. The Bat! Email Client

Hi Milo! I had absolutely no issues with Thunderbird over the last seven or eight years but now it's gone totally stupid and nobody at Mozilla seems to care because I have tripped over many complaints just like mine yet no effort whatsoever appears to have been made to sort it. Previously they were forcing updates upon us every month for no valid reason yet when something really important goes wrong they don't care.

What's the security like on Windows Live? Do I have to leave myself open to malicious violation by every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to make a fast buck or could I easily opt out of that party?

What about chucking Mozilla altogether and going for Opera and Opera Mail? I've looked at Opera before but never really taken to it. It used to be (I thought, anyway) that all of your bookmarks HAD to be in alphabetical order within each section - this rattled my cage too much because I wanted to group them the way I thought best... I like BetterPrivacy, Adblock Plus, ReminderFox, Ghostery and so on. Will I be denied these or similar with Opera?

The HTML rendering engine in Opera isn't secure. You appear to worry about that issue, so stay away. Also you won't be able to use those plugins
Safari has the same issues, and Chrome similar but different - though there is a NoScript plugin for Chrome
Also theres a privacy issue with Opera over the way searches are carried out and retained on their servers. Their browser service is very much "in the cloud" rather than on your PC

If its a secure e-mail client that you need, take a look at The Bat!
Its highly configurable - and more importantly by default blocks all scripts and images
You'd need third party spam filters, but thats easy enough to provide

As for Live Mail, its convenient - but it has issues. For instance when you try to send a photo attachment, instead by default it tries to load the image up to the web to your windows live account and then simply sends a link
Theres a workround, but its a kludge. Its OK for the hard of thinking, but for serious work its not really applicable. Thats why most of my customers use it......

Thanks for that Milo. I'll look further at the Bat, over this weekend if I get a chance. I've looked at their website already but have gleaned very little, especially about security issues. I don't need all sorts of fancy services, I just need to run about half a dozen e-mail accounts, find it secure and transparent and be able to migrate to it very easily and lose nothing in the process. I need a Thunderbird that works, really.....

My issues with Thunderbird seem not to be uncommon recently. As I have already related, I've spent ages trying to report my problems to anyone related to Mozilla who sets themselves up for that purpose but even that doesn't work for me and has driven me bonkers.

Thunderbird has worked so well for me for so long that my natural preference is to get it fixed and then stay with it. It's tricky, though, when I can't even communicate with them - nor them with me because they always want to do it by e-mail and that doesn't work, which is what I am about in the first instance!

One thing I did find (though I've lost the page) is that there is still an open three year old bug report in Thunderbird for the very error you have


But download The Bat! and have a look - you can run it as a 3-day trial
It should do all you need

Do you think the fact that the Bat is cuddling up to Google is healthy from the point of view of the user? (Discretion being the better part of valour may persuade you to give your frank answer by PM!)

"the Bat is cuddling up to Google "

Where did you get that from? I wasn't aware of any connection

The answer!

UNIX Basic commands: mail

:ok:

Milo, they state it themselves here, RITLabs. TheBat.net - FAQ for example and elsewhere.

I know that it's their webmail service but while some bats suck the blood of others, it might be a case of "biter bit" here. It seems an odd strategy on their part which might upset the sort of client who sought them out in the first place, in preference to the normal default services.

Too TECH for me, Mac!

Cameronian

I hadn't spotted that before, but now i have I wouldn't worry about it.

Looks like they wanted to provide free web server back end for their services, so they signed up with an existing provider for space. Attempting to run their own service would have been a loss: BT and Sky for instance both use others services (Yahoo and Google respectively)
Could've been Yahoo, or M$ r AOL or Google. However it doesn't affect the main product - which is a bullet proof mail client

Mmmmm, Milo - leopards and spots spring to mind.

I had seen that others were having the same problem as I have had but I confess that I had no idea that it had been going on for THREE LONG YEARS. Is there no sign that they might devote some effort to fixing it instead of burdening us with update after update for minor matters and cosmetic effect? I have tried to bring it to their attention but there were issues with that too, as I said above.

Well, it looks as if I've found all of the e-mails junked in error over the past few months. On the basis that they appeared on my computer, albeit on very briefly, I thought that they must be somewhere in my Thunderbird profile so I started looking. Under Mail there is a Local Folder file and a subfolder with my name on it. Between these two I can find all of the mails which remain extant upon my Thunderbird opening page. Then there are six more subfolders "pop3.terra-1.es" up to "pop3.terra-6.es" and then simply "pop3.terra.es" (terra being my internet server and .es referring to Spain). All of these are essentially empty except for number 4 whose "Junk" subfolder contains all of the mails which disappeared - but in a very untidy (for me, anyway!) form because there's a pile of extra content with each which must be routing information or something similar.

Recovering the text of these to my normal Thunderbird front page will be very useful but I want to stop it happening in the future.... Perhaps someone may be able to advise on a simple way to do this.

Each of these folders also contains a DAT File called msgFilterRules.dat which I can open with Firefox. I mention this because perhaps it might be appropriate to tinker with the contacts - but for this I would need expert advice. Conceivably this might allow effective bypassing of the Options and Account Settings (in the Tools menu) which ignore any attempt to change the Junk Mail filtering rules.

What do you think?

any chance that you were accessing the same mailbox from a different machine - e.g. an iPhone or Android phone?

Last week had something very similar where a mailbox was being accessed by a Mac and an iPhone and deleting stuff on one, simply moved it on the other to an obscure folder.

No I haven't been anywhere recently - one of the many benefits of living in Mallorca - and my mobile 'phone is absolutely only for 'phone calls! It comes with age, you see!

However, the simple fact of having found the mail (however awkward it may be to get it back to where it should be) gives me a warm feeling that whatever is wrong can't be too difficult to fix (and it would be easier still if all this stuff were written in Latin or something else civilised, instead of gobbledegook!).

What about the idea of tinkering with the files in the "Mail" subfolders to get the account preferences back to how they should be or would that turn everything tits up?