Yesterday I copied /home to another linux box. I am not sure that had anything to do with it but this morning when I opened Thunderbird there were only four emails in my inbox . . . it had hundreds this time yesterday! I looked in the /.mozilla-thunderbird directories in both boxes and they showed the same file size. Where did my mail go? LOL

How did you copy home directory from one machine to the other? Anyway, if you leave the original box untouched, mails should be still there. Where did you look for exactly?

I logged into the other box using connect to server and simply copied and pasted the home directory. I have been trying to learn how to use ssh and simple backup to do the job for me BUT I cannot seem to get the permissions right. No matter how I word the ssh://usernameassword@example.com/remote/dir I get an error message. I need to back my home directory up because I am thinking of reinstalling Ubuntu on this machine. Sorry for the long answer but I thought it might help you understand what I was trying to do.

I am not sure that copying my home directory was the cause for the lose in email. I am racking my poor aged mind to think what else I could have done. The "sent" folder doesn't seem to be effected. Only the is cleaned out. I am almost to the point where I am simply going to use web based email from now on. Oh to answer your last question I was looking in:
/home/tim/.mozilla-thunderbird/tyclrl4.default/Mail/Local Folders.

is it possible to use the command "find" to search for the missing file? I believe it is simply called inbox but when I use the commmand sudo find / -type f -name inbox -print
nothing is found. That cannot be because I know there is the inbox with four emails in it. What is the proper way to use the find command? That inbox should be over 100mb in size. Certainly it has to be somewhere on this machine.
Tim

This is ok, because it should have copied anything in the proper way, including hidden files and directories.
This is true. The most suitable way is to do a copy via command line, as in
I suspect you're right now. Anyway the directory "Local Folders" is created by default from the Thunderbird setup. I use "Local Folders" only to store my old mails coming from another machine. Instead, the incoming mail is stored in a directory at the same level of "Local Folders" that have the same name of my e-mail account. In brief, are you sure you've not another Inbox file in the original home? What about
? Just a silly guess to give you a little hope!