It started with duplicate Archive and Drafts folders...

That was the fallout due to a deliberate change in TB146.0 - and bad judgment from the developers. By now this change has been reverted with TB 146.0.1. The folder renamed to 'Archive' was still the Gmail 'All Mail' folder, containing all messages of your Gmail account.

I checked TB help, and it gave me several suggestions, including going to my Profile folder and deleting duplicate folders from there.

Unfortunately that was the wrong move. Based on your description you most likely erased the 'All Mail' folder renamed to Archive, and with it all your messages. It's not your fault, you couldn't know that.

By any chance, do you have a backup of your Thunderbird profile created prior to the incident? That would allow you to restore your messages.

Beyond that, there is probably little you can do. When logging in to your Gmail account via browser - have you checked the Trash folder, whether anything is still there?

Thanks so much for your input, Christ1...it's nice to know that at least some of my problems were caused by TB and not by me. (But then there's my own mistake......ugg)

But here's what's weird: two evenings ago I closed the laptop and went to bed...and when I got up in the morning, my Inbox was full, with over 10,000 messages going back to 2021! The "Sent" folder was missing on TB, along with many of my subfolders...so I just recreated the Sent folder and held my breath. Nothing.

But then today, when I checked Gmail, the Sent folder had over 14,000 emails! Also on Gmail, my All Mail has over 10,000 emails, so it obviously contains some of those missing emails...yet on TB, there aren't even 100 emails in All Mail. Gmail Trash has almost 6800 emails, so it may contain some of those missing emails too. In Gmail's "Labels," the imap.gmail.com/INBOX/archives is completely empty, along with several other labels and sub-labels. However, the label for the listserv that I administer has almost 5700 emails (and the one on TB has zero.) I've tried everything I can think of to get Gmail to sync those emails with TB, but nothing happens.

Any hints as to how to get the emails to migrate from Gmail to TB?

And to answer your question about old profiles...I couldn't find anything on my laptop in the old profile folder from August of this year except a 2KB .json file.

But I JUST NOW realized that since my laptop is new, iDrive might have the backups from my old laptop...and there they were!! In fact, there are 3 Profiles folders!!!!! One folder has very little, the 2nd one has nothing but a .json file...but the 3rd one has EVERYTHING. All my old folders, subfolders, etc. Now, the "Date Modified" is from 2022 and 2023...but I just got this new laptop in October of this year, so depending upon whether or not there are more recent email in those folders, I may have only lost 2 months worth of emails,

But now my question is, what do I do with the profile and all the folders? Do I just restore them all to my new laptop (and perhaps create a mess of conflicting folders & emails that will take me days to reorganize)? But if that's the worst that could happen, I'll live with it and do what I have to do.

Again, I can't thank you enough...your question about the backup profile was what got me thinking about the previous iDrive backup! I'll wait to hear from you with your suggestions before I do ANYTHING.

Joan

First of all, TB v146.0.1 has been released, which reverted the change initially in v146.0 that caused so much trouble. If you haven't updated to v146.0.1 yet I'd suggest to do that first. Do things look any better with v146.0.1?

But now my question is, what do I do with the profile and all the folders? Do I just restore them all to my new laptop (and perhaps create a mess of conflicting folders & emails that will take me days to reorganize)?

Frankly, I can hardly follow what's on the new, and on the old laptop, as well as what's backed up to your 'iDrive'. So I don't think I'm in the position to give any specific advise what to do. For the time being I'd suggest you focus on the device you currently work with, and what's on the Gmail server. Everything on the server should also be visible in Thunderbird. With the large no. of messages scattered over different folders there is always a risk that anti-virus software is interfering with Thunderbird mail files, which, in the worst case, can lead to data loss.

To prevent that from happening it is recommended to create an exception in your anti-virus software for the Thunderbird profile folder, so that the anti-virus real-time scanner will not scan it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_how-to-find-your-profile

Wrt backing up the Thunderbird profile, it's recommended to do that on a regular basis. You can either use your iDrive method, or follow the manual steps as described in this support article: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile

Don't use Thunderbird's built-in export tool, it may not work reliably for large profiles. Use the manual steps instead.

Yes, I have the 146.01 version (I have automatic updates set up).

Thanks for the suggestions about creating an exception in my antivirus program for the TB profile, and about creating regular backups of my profile folder. I'll do both right away.

However, you say that "everything on the [Gmail] server should be visible in TB"...but it's not. For instance, on the Gmail server, there are over 14,000 emails in my "Sent" folder...whereas on TB there are only the 2 I've sent in the last 2 days. "Trash" on Gmail has almost 6800 emails, but only 630 on TB. On Gmail, there are more than 34,000 emails in "All Mail," but only 158 in TB. Clearly, there's a sync issue, but I don't know what it is or how to cure it. If I were to uninstall TB and re-install it, would that kick Gmail into syncing? Or would that create more problems than it solves?

Thanks again for all your help here...you're my hero!

Joan

Hi Joan,

I defer to christ1's superior knowledge, but one possibility is that your Thunderbird installation no longer has the privileged IMAP sent and trash folders because you deleted them. But they still exist on the server, so you just have to subscribe to them.

Right click on the name of your account in the folder pane. Select "Subscribe". Do you see a sent folder and a trash folder that are not checked? Check them.

Then make sure that Thunderbird is putting new sent and new deleted messages into the right folders. Account settings > Copies & Folders and Account settings > Server settings.