# What happened to all my old email messages?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-my-old-email-messages/403066>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 7, 2007, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-my-old-email-messages/403066 "2007-05-07T04:20:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![I\_Know\_Nothing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f04885/32.png) [@I\_Know\_Nothing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Know_Nothing)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2007, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-my-old-email-messages/403066/1 "2007-05-07T04:20:47Z")

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I just reinstalled Windows XP on my C drive. Before reinstall I moved everything in needed to keep to my S drive(my second hard drive). One of these programs was Firefox, and it had many messages in the inbox which I needed to keep. After moving the entire program to the S drive, I double checked that it worked before reinstalling. Now when I run Firefox it just prompts me to set up a new account, and all the old info is gone, including all the old emails. Where did they all go and can I get them back?

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**Author:** ![Garfield226](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2007, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-my-old-email-messages/403066/2 "2007-05-07T04:22:14Z")

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Firefox is a web browser, not an email client. This may be a factor in your problem.

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**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2007, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-my-old-email-messages/403066/3 "2007-05-07T04:29:05Z")

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Assuming you actually mean Thunderbird, [this link](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup) describes how to back up and restore a profile (though it may be a bit late in this case).

[These](http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/100.html) appears to be some useful general case email restoration info.

Assuming TB and 2k/XP, your info should be in C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles. If you backed that up, then you need to tell TB where it is somehow. If you didn’t… that would be bad.

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**Author:** ![I\_Know\_Nothing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f04885/32.png) [@I\_Know\_Nothing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Know_Nothing)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2007, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-all-my-old-email-messages/403066/4 "2007-05-07T04:29:39Z")

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[QUOTE=Garfield226]  
Firefox is a web browser, not an email client. This may be a factor in your problem.  
[/QUOTE]

Oops, sorry. I do that all the time. I was referring to Thunderbird.