I reinstalled ubuntu, reinstalled thunderbird and moved my data (including mails, which I always keep seperate from system partition) back from my backup to its home.

I set up thunderbird and the account settings and now I'm in trouble:

it reads all the folders ok, but then it just thinks and thinks and thinks and can't read any content. so all my mails are gone, are they - I've always kept my folders very clean&tidy so they really aren't big nor are there too old mails.

now I can only assume that the new version (the one I had before wasn't older than half a year??) can only read folders, but not the files the old version created. (I mean this wasn't even an issue when I switched from netscape communicator - anyone remember - to thunderbird, so my thesis can't be true.

well, but perhaps some files shifted when I moved them back and forth what with backup and reinstall and all that.

it maybe help to compare my fs to another tb user, thinks I. so here's the result (I went to visit my bro next door):

I have, e.g. in the inbox a subfolder called 'ebay'. in the directory /.../inbox.sbd there is a subfolder 'ebay', an ebay.msf file (type objective-c source) and an ebay file with no appendix (type "email message" whatever that means). the latter of which he hasn't, using ver 1.0 (as opposed to 1.5)

now is there anything I can do to save my mail?

Have you tried simply importing files with the "import" tool? I think you may try searching for information on differences between pop and imap mail. My ImapMail folder contains a different kind of hierarchy (though the pop mail is the same as yours but if I remember correctly, I only have Imap addresses anyway).

I think what you need to do is recreate your profile, then go into the settings for the profile and tell it where to look for data. I'm not at my computer right now so I can't say exactly where to go, but that's the basic idea. Or, having recreated the profile, just copy over the old files, overwriting the new ones.

as far as the import goes, it doesn't seem to be doing anything. and it can import from communicator 4.x anyway.

and about recreating my profile: first I had TB 1.0.7 (in the packages like that) then it didn't work, so I installed TB 1.5 and did it all over again. so I don't think trying again would help...

ok, now here's what was wrong (probably): I hadn't realized that I didn't have write permissions to the partition in question, so I set those mount opts properly and when I checked if the TB prob is still there, it wasn't. happier than ever.