For your sanity, I encourage logging into your online account to reassure yourself that all the messages are there. Then, I suggest unsubscribing from Allmail. That folder causes your disk space to be doubled, your send and receive time to double, and your resource usage to be much higher. Allmail is a duplicate of all other folder.

it does not make ANY sense this post. All Mail is NOT an option, neither can you unsubscribe ONLY from this folder. Useless post. BTW I've been using Thunderbird before it was Thunderbird, when it was part of Firefox, and this weird behavior just appeared recently.

I am unsubscribed as are many others, and it is the documented suggestion from Thunderbird. The allmail folder is never needed. Just yesterday, two users thanked me for that suggestion as it improved their system performance. Good luck to you.

I've used the All Mail folder since ever, with not problems... actually I use it a lot to clean emails that take too much space... in one folder I can see all my emails, as I have a complex folder structure (more than 40+ folders)... my mail is sorted automatically by hundreds of filters... it looks like you are a pretty simple user, like most.

I stand by my statement; you do not need Allmail, but it's obvious that you prefer it. I do hope you get your problem resolved. This is the first occurrence I have seen where all messages seemed to disappear.

Is a quick filter set?

my filters are ALL customized by me... with many emails directed to one special folder, like NEWS, or ORDERS, or FAMILY

my filters are ALL customized by me... with many emails directed to one special folder, like NEWS, or ORDERS, or FAMILY

Quick filters are different from those filters. Please see the attached image.

I see what you mean... none of these filters bring back all my emails as it used to be...

The point is to make sure that no filters are active. You probably have done that.

Right click on the folder, select properties, then repair. Give it a little time.

Have you checked webmail for the messages?

Do you have a back-up?

David’s suggestions are sound. I wonder how helpful it is to 139,000 messages in one folder. But your strong preference is clear. Whatever works for you.

there is no REPAIR in my version, I did several times the COMPACT and nothing changed. yeap I gave it time... like days... as I said, I miss the possibility to see all emails in one folder, as it helps me clean up my GMail from hitting my space limit, so far I'm within the free space... actually I use only 4Mb... I keep my GMail tidy, even with 139K emails.

found the REPAIR option... yes, I've already tried this at the very beginning of trouble shooting...

found the REPAIR option... yes, I've already tried this at the very beginning of trouble shooting...

Yet this is the first you have mentioned it. Interesting that you are seeking volunteer peer support but are not explaining what you have already done. It might not be important but my experience with things like this is one person having a problem when millions of others do not almost always means something they have set or changed installed that has had an unintended consequence so full understanding of your settings if often required before progress can be made.

So in the interests of moving this forward;

For your sanity, I encourage logging into your online account to reassure yourself that all the messages are there.

Are they?

Click this link. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/labels Confirm please that the all mail label is actually being offered as an IMAP folder in Googles settings. As you will see on the page, only the inbox is actually required for IMAP. Everything else is optional.

Now right click on your "All Mail" folder in the account list in Thunderbird and select properties and instead of using the repair button read the folder name in the location. Does it end with /[gmail]/All Mail

Just as a curiosity repeat this for the archive folder and say what that folder is called in the location.

Now if the "All Mail" folder is showing in the location and it is selected as an available IMAP folder with Gmail Please right click your account and select subscribe from the menu.

This is the list of folders I am offered by Thunderbird to subscribe to for a gmail account.

What folders are shown in yours? Is all mail listed there? (perhaps post screen shots of that. The link takes you to Apple as I try to avoid support topics for Apple users on the whole as they tend to provide special issues I do not have the patience for.

thanks for the long and detailed message. I didn't offer details on what I've done, because I've been dealing with this problem for a few weeks and have not done a calculated / methodical process, rather random attempts, thinking this was a simple and rare glitch. basically I was trying to see if this was a widespread problem, not a rare one. yes All Mail is set to show in IMAP not in labels... it does not work on Gmail web access as you cannot see the size of the email... only Thunderbird allows this and that is one reason I keep using it. yes the right click shows the right physical folder: All Mail. yes I'm subscribed. after all what I've been doing, I was able to FORCE Thunderbird to re-download all emails from to this folder, and currently is in the email Nr 106581... about two emails per second. disabled the sleep of the HD during the night and was able to have some extra 30,000... I'm close to see all the emails been re-downloaded soon... I'll see then, if I can avoid what I'd consider my last attempt, that will be to delete the folder at the physical location in my HD, and re-start the downloading. again, I thought this was probably something more common and just waiting for an update or a simple trick to solve it. never thought to engage into this kind of details and length of exchange. thanks this email account is a shortest/trimmed version of several Gmail accounts, and this account only have 30 years of emails... I used to move all my older emails, using drag and drop in TB to other storage only emails I had. it took me some time to optimize my way of keeping the content and getting rid of the attachments (only TB can do it). again thanks...