Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Lil Sparrow wrote:
Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Firstly you have never said if this was POP3 or IMAP mail. This is
very significant because it determines *where* the email is actually
stored.
If is was POP3 then the actually messages would be located on your
hard drive in subdirectories under Mail within your profile directory:
Enter "about:support" in the browser url bar
Under "Application Basics" find "Profile Folder" and click "Open
Folder" button.
There should be a "Mail" subdirectory. If you are restoring your
backup to the correct location all your POP3 accounts would be there
with names like mail.example.com or pop.example.com
I use POP3. I was told a long time ago that using IMAP removes all
the mails from the server once they are download to an email client.
Okay as Keith says it is actually the opposite with default settings.
There's nothing in the Mail subdirectory except what is already on
the machine. I can't get any email to download except what was
download after installing SeaMonkey initially.
Okay here is how you can fix this. I have moved profiles from system
to system, OS to OS and fixed corrupted profiles many, many times.
Thank you for your help. I'll see if I can get my old machine
stabilised and use that instead of the new machine.
So you have mail saved on an old computer, great! Since it is POP it
will be on the hard drive of that computer. You can actually move that
mail and add it to your new computer that is missing all your previous
mail, but you have to do some things first so as not to *overwrite*
one or the other.
1) Yes the locations where the mail resides is hidden area but here
are ways around that. Follow my steps *exactly* and I will guarantee
you can get your old mail back.
2) On *new* computer: Start SeaMonkey and enter "about:support" in URL
bar.
3) At "Profile Folder" click "Open Folder", this will open Explorer in
that hidden area.
4) Close SeaMonkey and back in Explorer move into parent "Profile" and
you should see your current profile named "something.default" where
"something" is a random 8-character string. Make a copy of this folder
for backup, CYA.
5) On *old* computer open if SeaMonkey runs do the same thing as steps
1-3. If SeaMonkey does not run then assuming the profile is in the
default location: WinKey+R to open Run box and enter, (you can cut and
paste it):
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles
Explorer will open to that hidden area area and you should see another
profile folder "something.default" move into that folder
6) Find the "Mail" subfolder and your mail folder should be something
like mail.yourisp.com, pop.yourisp.com or incoming.yourisp.com and
move into that folder.
7) In the mail profile folder your you should see files with no file
extensions.
(If you have not done so already in Explorer under Options [Win10 View
Options > View] or [WinXP Tools > Folder options < View ] and
uncheck 'Hide extensions for known file type'. Stupid default by
Microsoft)
These files without extensions 'Archive', 'Drafts', 'Inbox', 'Sent',
'Junk' are your actual "Mail Folders" in SeaMonkey. If you has
subfolder then they will be named "Archive.sbd".
8) Identify what you want to transfer. For example if you want to save
your Inbox, Sent, and Archive, and your archives have subfolders which
it would for each year then *copy* these files:
'Inbox', 'Sent', 'Archive' and the folder 'Archive.sbd' to some
removable media, or network location, or temp location to burn on
CD/DVD-R
9) You now need to prevent *overwriting* your current mail so you
*must* change the names of these files and folders before moving to
your new computer. I suggest something obvious:
Inbox => OldInbox
Sent => OldSent
Archive => OldArchive
Archive.sbd => OldArchive.sbd
10) Once renamed you can add these files and folders to your new
computer If you still have it running and Explorer open to your
profile, great! If not, you can use the WinKey+R method with
"%APPDATA%\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles" to find your profile then
traverse to "something.default: > Mail > "mail.yourisp.com" mail profile.
Copy these "Old*" files and folders along side existing Inbox, Sent,
etc there.
11) Start SeaMonkey and Open Mail & Newsgroups window.
NOTE: There may be a delay depending on the size of your old legacy
mail you just transferred as SeaMonkey builds the *.msf mailbox
indexes. Once complete you will discover your old mail is in there in
their respective "new" folders OldInbox, OldSent, etc. You can now
drag and drop messages from these "Old*" folders to the respective
folders to consolidate and restore your old mail.
12) Once your are certain that you recovered your legacy mail your can
delete the temporary "Old*" folders in SeaMOnkay and you can dump the
CYA backup of your profile created back in step 4.
HTH
Thank you for the detailed instructions. Unfortunately the backup is
coming up as corrupted. So there is nothing more I can do.
The mails are gone for good.
Lil Sparrow
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