Thunderbird losing message and headers after renaming submenu BT webmail

[unwina]

I use webmail for most day to day stuff and as i manage a number of email systems i use Thunderbird to have backups and also read non main accounts.

In my main email uname@btinternet.com i use menu structures to save emails i want to refer back to later in the month/year etc and it works well until recently when i renamed some of the email folder names.

I renamed some sub levels and most seemed to work but sadly some don't. The submenu item changes to that on the webmail server but emails get lost in the changed submenus and are no longer there. I've tried a number of things right down to upgrading the tbird version to current available, removing the email account affected and reinstalling to no avail the submenu is there but the system seems to say there are emails but nothing appears in the submenu. I have a number of email accounts as i manage our household that appear so when i reinstalled and removed the offending email i did not remove the whole system from my machine.  

I have checked my mobile (gmail I think) and the bt emails are there under the renamed foldernames and they are still in webmail ok but not in t'bird for some reason. I also use mailstore and that seems to have copied the changed items correctly.

I know there are some people who swear by t'bird but i'm just thinking It's not up to the job anymore as a method of reading emails and definitely not useful for backup purposes! (Free mailstore only allows 3 mails before having to pay (Yes i know i am an old cheapskate. 

Any ideas anyone?

[licquorice]

Make sure you have 'subscribed' to the relevant folders in Thunderbird.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@unwina 

You need to insure that any new folders you make changes to, are in fact "subscribed" to, otherwise any changes will not be reflected on the IMAP folder structure.

@licquorice  snap.

[unwina]

@Keith_Beddoe , @licquorice 

Thanks that's rather interesting what do you both mean they have to be subscribed to ? Where are they subscribed to most of these folders were in fact old folders and i usually check t'bird every week just after i make sure that the mailstore weekend refreshes have been done usually on a sunday.

Sorry if question sounds a bit dumb 😉

[licquorice]

Go to File > Subscribe > select the relevant account and tick the folders you wish to sync

Click subscribe and OK

[unwina]

Thanks, I've done that but nothing seems to change it still has nothing inn the folder i am checking says there are 0 unread and 0 total. I've clicked get messages a couple of time but nothing seems to happen. should i get them loaded or are they in fact lost - having clicked all items in my folders list as subscribed now should they be loading or as i say are they lost to t'bird forever...)-;  

[unwina]

So i followed everything as far as i can see and dropped a new email into the changed folder but still it says 0 unread and total 0 and nothing new shows in the suspect folder. 

I'm at a loss and wondering what i can do rather than stop using t'bird as it no longer seems to work for me unless i can find a way for it to work.

[unwina]

@licquorice @Keith_Beddoe , I had another thought if i change the folder name, quite a common thing when moving stuff around ion webmail will i have the same issues perhaps in that the new name on BTmail will not be synced down to t'bird correctly. Unless i'm missing what seems to have happened so far.

[Graham18]

You could try repairing the folder, as described here https://www.lifewire.com/repair-folders-thunderbird-1173102

[unwina]

@Graham18 thanks i tried that a few time and just tried again to no avail.

I changed the offending directory again on webmail and got a message from t'bird that came up stating that the folder no longer exists when i click on it in t'bird. This version of t'bird seems to have different stuff than last one did. 

'The current operation on 'old folder name' did not succeed. The mail server for account xxx@btinternet.com responded: the specified mailbox does not exist.'

That's a new message - i upgraded to latest version 91.5.0 (64-bit) today - so i wonder do they know that this might be an issue as yet. Perhaps i have set it up wrong after i removed the old account and started again. I shut down t'bird and started up again and when i logged into my account it still detailed the message above so clearly t'bird does not like changing the folder name on webmail and expecting it to appear on tbird. Not sure t'bird should be in control as there are a number of places i could change a folder name perhaps then t'bird would get confused.

I think i'll ditch this for my main account for the moment as it seems t'bird wants to be the master and i want webmail to be the master  for my main account.