I used eM client for many years, once licensed for more than one account. Having two new Windows 11 machines, I decided to switch to Thunderbird. Everything went fine until TB’s compacting folders, probably combined with an unwanted restart, resulted in losing much of my mail history within my main account. IMAP worked sufficiently to sync the almost empty mail folders within only seconds… including my provider’s email account. Before going back to my old Windows 10 laptop with EM client, I turned off its Wi-Fi connection to prevent it from syncing that very same emptiness. No problem, I thought, everything is still there! I’m sorry for my long introduction. Here comes my problem:
I could export thousands of messages to EML files to import them in Thunderbird, but many of the messages have the status “not fully downloaded for offline use”. Unfortunately, I can not import those messages. I’m sure reconnecting that laptop to the internet would sync and therefore delete immediately. It’s very frustrating to see all the within IMAP missing messages on my isolated laptop, still presented in their full glory (layout) and with fully working attachments. But, as far as I can see, without a future life, wherever. Does anyone have any idea how to rescue that part of my email history? Thanks in advance.
If you have and IMAP acct setup and nothing in eM Client Local folders, then you shouldn’t normally have lost anything “as all your mail is all stored on the server end”. Thats very strange Thunderbird automatically deleted it via a compacting feature. I personally would suggest to contact Thunderbird support and ask them if that compacting can be reversed to retrieve your messages. Or contact your Mail server technical support and see if they have a copy of your mailbox they can restore. Some mail servers do keep copies depending on your providor.
If your messages cannot be retrieved / reversed in Thunderbird back to your mail server end and your mailbox provider cannot restore your mailbox, and you haven’t previously set eM Client to download messages and attachments offline in your IMAP account Sync Settings and getting the message error not fully downloaded for offline use, then you normally can’t retrieve / export your messages out of eM Client as its not been fully cached locally.
The only option is “if you have a recent eM Client automatic or manual backup.zip file that did have your messages fully synced / cached offline”, then you can restore your data and export your messages via the following eM Client blog link extract below.
Restore in Offline Mode
Synced accounts that have been removed from the server can still have their backup restored. If you’ve enabled automatic backups; your information will be recovered from the last time that you were online and a backup was performed. Follow these steps to restore your backup in offline mode:
Navigate to Menu > File > Restore.
Select your backup and start the restore.
When the application shuts down, hold down the Ctrl key - you’ll be asked if you would like to start the application in offline mode.
Once the restore is completed, you’ll be able to see all of the messages, calendar events, contacts, notes, and tasks from the last time you were online and saved your information in a backup. Restoring in online mode will replace the restored data from the backup with new data from the server. This is because the server contains the newest data, so it has priority. Everything would be wiped out after the initial sync. If you restore your backup data and the app is offline: you have time to either export the messages into files or copy them into local folders.
Export the data using Menu > File > Export. Alternatively, you can select and then drag and drop specific files in the folders on your device.
I was very wrong about Thunderbird’s compacting feature as the reason of my loss. I caused the deletion of messages myself!
IMAP made sure it happened on my account itself.
I could copy the still full view of all messages within eM on another computer (not touching my old laptop) using the restore feature, as you advised. It’s the same story. Within eM, everything is available, and I can export it all from there. But I can only import those messages from the mail server or from Thunderbird, which are fully synced /cached offline.
I guess it will not surprise you that the difference in status (stalled eM offline or not) appears to be the same for the very same email messages, regardless of the date of the backup.zip file. I tried three different ones.
Do you know why eM not synced can still show everything that was deleted by me myself within IMAP?