Thunderbird deleted my emails when I deleted them from Yahoo webmail!
I setup IMAP and downloaded all of my emails to Thunderbird. Once I verified that all emails were downloaded, I went to Yahoo mail and deleted them thinking that I had them on my computer. Years of emails ALL missing. P.O.S. Thunderbird. The incompetent swine at Yahoo somehow only able to restore some emails from 2006 and and many deleted messages from 2016, but everything in between is missing. How they could get the oldest and newest but not restore everything else is a trip. Anyway, I'm totally lost because I went to where Thunderbird support said to copy the file in my local settings folder /profiles, but apparently Thunerbird seems to actually be using a profiles folder in /roaming. WTF? It was Thunderbird support which said to backup the stupid local settings folder and not the roaming. I really need some help, if there's even anything I can do. If not then Thunderbird is the worst freaking nightmare and crappiest supported product ever. I'll never use Mozilla anything again. Someone please help if possible.
By the way, I had it set to keep copies of the messages on the computer.
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Sorry to hear that. However, if you had copied the messages to the "Local Folders" special account before deleting the originals they'd be safe regardless of what you did to the IMAP account.
It doesn't matter where the profile is stored, its a question of where/how in the profile you stored the downloaded messages. I suspect you did not understand what sync implied, and treated it as if you were downloading mail to a POP account. Unfortunately that is a easy mistake to make.
Offline folders (managed by the accounts synchronization & storage settings) mirror the contents of the remote folders. So if you delete a message in a remote folder, when the remote and offline folders sync, the message gets deleted in the offline folder too. That is why they are NOT safe backups. Personally, I disagree with the decision to enable offline folders by default because they can be easily misunderstood.
Copying the messages to Local Folders would have been the best solution. However if you had disabled the offline folders (either unchecking them in "advanced" or unchecking "keep messages for this account on the computer") before deleting the messages that would have prevented the files that the offline folders use to store messages from being modified or deleted. You could have imported them using the ImportExportTools add-on into either Local Folders or a POP account.
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP_backup
At this point its not clear what you can do to recover the messages. What did you backup and to where? Please be very specific. In the interim try not to compact any folders because that physically removes "deleted" messages.
"Anyway, I'm totally lost because I went to where Thunderbird support said to copy the file in my local settings folder /profiles," Could you post a link to where somebody stated that? Your profile appears to have only one question (this one), so I'm wondering if you misunderstood advice meant for somebody else. Perhaps somebody was saying to copy the mbox files for the IMAP account to "Local Folders" and they used jargon you did not understand.
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