e-mail from Thunderbird gone poof?

[Rathji]

My Grandparents lost net access for a day or so and when my grandpa opened Thunderbird yesterday and his huge collections of email are gone. When he starts Thunderbird all he gets is the " New Account creation wizard", so I assume that it has been reset somehow. I have talked him through recreating his account so he can check his email, but of course all his old email is now no where to be found.

Why would it suddenly eliminate the old profile? Is there anyway we can prevent this from happening again? Is there anyway to import this old email from the old profile?

I haven't used any non-web based email in so long that I cant give him any real help and he lives almost 3 hours away so its not like I can go sit down at his computer and fiddle with it.

[llama64]

This might help: http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile#move


Basically, you need to check if the mail is stored in the "C:\Documents & Settings\[username]\Application Data\Thunderbird" directory. Chances are, Thunderbird some how got confused over what profile it was loading.

Hope this helps!

[Rathji]

Yeah I tried to get him to walk through that last night, was a failed maneuver. I doubt there is a simple way to do it that is 'old person proof?'