[Solved]The mail "database" is there but Opera Mail detects only a few messages
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pinorossi last edited by
I am using OperaMail with a very large mail "database" (messages since 2008, 28GByte) and about ten different email accounts.
Last week I switched smoothly from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.Yesterday, I saw a "hardware failure" message from Windows and since the PC restarted, Opera Mail shows only 8 (eight) messages (rather "randomly" selected: 2 in June 2015 and 6 in August and December 2014). I did not notice other problems and I am still able to send and receive emails with all my accounts using Opera Mail.
In addition, the mail folder (in C:\Users\Pino\AppData\Local\Opera Mail\Opera Mail\mail) still contains all .mbs files organised into the store subfolder (for accounts, years, months and days).
I do not know if the the "hardware failure" is related to the problem but my question is:
How can I force Opera Mail to see all mail messages (contained in the mail folder)?Thanks
Giuseppe -
burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
I do not know if the the "hardware failure" is related to the problem but my question is:
It most likely is. The database is very delicate.
How can I force Opera Mail to see all mail messages (contained in the mail folder)?
If you have a recent backup of the mail folder, it's best to just replace your mail folder with it and lose any new messages you've received since that backup. Replacing all files and folders except the "store" folder form the backup should be good enough.
If that's not an option, there's really no way to to force Opera to scan the store folder and recreate/fix the database.
However, you can do that manually.
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* Export your feeds list and contacts with "Menu -> settings -> import and export".
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* Close down Opera Mail and delete contacts.adr and wand.dat in the "preferences" folder. See "Help -> about Opera Mail" for the location.
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* Rename the "mail" folder.
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* Start Opera Mail" and add your each of your mail accounts back in via "Menu -> mail and chat accounts -> add". Do not import.
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* For each of your POP accounts (don't do this for IMAP/Newsgroup/Feed accounts), goto "Menu -> settings -> import and export -> import mail -> import generic mbox -> add folder" and point it to the accountN folder (where N is the number for the account as seen in accounts.ini) in the "store" folder in the the old "mail" folder. Then, set "import into" to that account and import. (Look for the email address for each account in accounts.ini to find out which number the account is.)
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* Import your feeds list and readjust their update intervals.
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* Import your contacts.
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* Recreate any Opera labels (and their rules and settings) that you want. And, manually add any messages to those labels that were manually added before.
That's the only way to truly fix it. There's no way to save already-fetched feed messages that are no longer on the feed page and there's no way to save already-fetched newsgroup messages (unless you want to import their accountN folders into a new or existing POP account).
There's no way to save your labels. However, you can copy the index entries from the old index.ini to the new. You just have to renumber them before inserting them at the end of index.ini. Renumber them to continue where the last number left off. Then, update the index count at the top to reflect the new number of indexes. This will create the labels and rules in thew new mail folder and the rules should run again (if not change an option in each label's preferences, close out and change it back). But, any messages that were manually added to a label before will have to be manually added to a label again.
Setting up the accounts won't take you that long. And, the import process won't be hard. However, importing as many messages as you have will take a long time. But, it should be doable as long as Opera doesn't encounter any errors importing the mbs files.
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pinorossi last edited by
Many thanks for the long and accurate answer. I will take the time to follow carefully your suggestions.
Just to summarize after a quick reading: it is possible to re-build the database for all accounts but additional labels etc. Are lost (or much more difficult to restore).
Apparently, the news is good for me as I will be able to search and find previous messages
Thanks again, I will let you know the final outcome
Giuseppe -
burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
Just to summarize after a quick reading: it is possible to re-build the database for all accounts but additional labels etc. Are lost (or much more difficult to restore).
Yes, pretty much.
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pinorossi last edited by
Thanks a lot burnout426!!!
I followed your suggestions and I was able to recover completely my mail database. It took time (hours) for old accounts with a lot of messages (of many years) but it worked.
It was also an opportunity to reorganise (simplify) a few email accounts (in particular, I imported into a single mail account the email messages from several related accounts that are now closed / dismissed and derived from from past working experiences. Apparently it worked nicely)
New contacts were automatically created from the imported messages. Thus, I was able to work immediately, at least with the most used email addresses.
I am now trying to make a comparison with the file "contacs.adr" I saved before the restructuring, to see if something is missing or named differently.Thanks.
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