Duane,


Two things ...


First, I found instructions for repairing a folder in Thunderbird. I 
followed the first four steps, and they worked, but for some reason, I 
had to open and close Thunderbird a couple of times to bring up the 
context menu.


 1. Turn off automatic mail checking as a precaution. ...
 2. With the right mouse button, click on the folder you want to repair
    in Mozilla*Thunderbird*.
 3. Select Properties… from the menu that appears.
 4. Go to the General Information tab.
 5. Click Repair Folder.
 6. Click OK.


Second, what you call a pointer ... I sometimes get those. I'm reading 
email; then suddenly, I open a message, and it's just a pointer. Does 
anyone know what that is? In some cases, I can turn the pointer into 
text by using a different screen reader or restarting Thunderbird. In 
other cases, I can read the text by forwarding or replying to the 
message. In most cases, nothing helps. I'm not sure whether the problem 
is the screen reader, the message, or Thunderbird. For me, it happens 
about once a month.

Ciao

On 9/26/2018 7:48 AM, Duane Farrar wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I was compacting my Mozilla Thunderbird mail folders when my desktop 
> decided to spontaneously reboot itself. (It does this from time to 
> time and I suspect a conflict between JAWS and either the sound or 
> graphics hardware. Other option is the computer is simply a hunk of 
> junk.) It was in the process of compacting the Inbox folder when this 
> happened. When I reopened Thunderbird, while some of the older 
> messages were still intact, the majority consisted of only what I will 
> call a "pointer" along the lines of the following:
>
> mailbox:///C:/Users/Duane%20Farrar/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/syuquqis.default/Mail/pop.mindspring.com/Inbox?number=11988 
>
>
> Some messages still retained at least their header information (To, 
> From, Subject, Date, etc.) along with a pointer, but most are simply 
> the pointer. However, my daughter tells me that she can see this 
> header information for all of the messages in the Message List pane, 
> which I cannot read with JAWS 17 and the current version of Thunderbird.
>
> So, I suspect the message data is still somewhere on my hard drive. 
> I've played around with it for most of this morning but have not yet 
> successfully retrieved the messages. Thunderbird does not seem to have 
> a repair utility. I *think* there is a Thunderbird backup dating from 
> September 20 that exists that perhaps I could restore from, but I 
> don't know the steps required to do the restore. (I came across this 
> when I was trying to directly open the messages using the file path 
> above, but that didn't work, either.)
>
> Thoughts or suggestions anyone? And, no, I don't have a recent hard 
> drive backup to restore from, which is my own fault so bad on me.
>
> Thanks,
> Duane
>
>
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