Thanks Brian

I've saved that thread and solution for "next time" as this corruption is not the first to happen to me.

I managed to use a month old backup HIERARCH file and that restored 90% of my tray structure. A bit of moving and shaking and I'm back to OK.

Thanks again for your (and others) advice - much appreciated.

Good afternoon,

Damn Windows update overnight (Grrrrrr)  has resulted in the loss of approximately 400 folders in my PM installation.

Is there a quick retrieval solution to restore all folders? My last back-up is about 4 days old. Can I copy a file from backup that will save me many, many hours of rebuilding my setup?

I welcome a swift solution.

Thanks

Have you confirmed that the files are actually gone?  They are *.PMM and *.PMI files located in your home mailbox directory (default is C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ADMIN or C:\PMAIL\MAIL).

As for recovery, if your backup is a full of the \PMAIL directory you can rename your current one to something like \PMAIL_BAD and then restore your backup as \PMAIL.  Pegasus Mail will then start in the state it was at the time of the backup.  Consider running in offline mode (-O commandline option) so new messages don't get downloaded while you sort things out.

Recovery of the messages that arrived over the past 4 days that remained in the new mail folder will be .CNM files located in the home mailbox directory of \PMAIL_BAD.  They can be copied to the same directory in the restored \PMAIL.

Hope this helps.

Windows Update does not touch Pegasus Mail's folders, messages etc.

Where did you have your mail stored? There was an issue with the Windows 10 October upgrade that deleted content on a minority of Windows installations but that was pulled. As you mention updates, and a slew of updates was released yesterday, I assume you really do mean yesterday's updates. Follow Brian's recommendations.

Thank you for the feedback thus far.

To be clear, all my messages are still intact however the directory structure ie Folders (Filing Trays) have all gone.

The program is installed at E:\PMAIL

Viewing in File Explorer, I can confirm I now have duplicate files one with extension and one without:

 FOL059F5.PMI

FOL059F5 

The file without extension is seen as a PMM in File Explorer.

As "Murphy's Law" dictates - my backup is not 4 days old - its 4 weeks old so restoring from backup may not be an option given the volume of inbound / outbound emails I create.

This has happened before when Windows forces a shutdown of an already open PMail.

So, any solution is welcome.

Thanks. 

A lost folder list hierarchy (eg: no more tray structure) is the result of a damaged HIERARCH.PM file.  This is the file that stores that virtual tray structure.  When it gets damaged, Pegasus Mail creates a new one but has no knowledge of the previous structure so all folders end up at the root level in the folder list.  Unfortunately, the only fix is the restore of the HIERARCH.PM file from a backup.  Otherwise a manual recreation of the structure is required. 

You can try a restore of the HIERARCH.PM file from your backup.  Do it with Pegasus Mail closed.  On next startup, Pegasus Mail will attempt to compare its contents to the physical folder files and update it with new found folders.  No guarantees it will work because of its age, but it's worth a try. 

You have backed up your current mailbox directory right?  You want to at least be able to get back to the current state should something go sideways while trying to fix.

Thank you so much for the explanation and advice.

I'll do as you suggest and see how I go.

Your a champion of the first order.

Kind regards from DownUnder,

"You can try a restore of the HIERARCH.PM file from your backup.  Do it

with Pegasus Mail closed.  On next startup, Pegasus Mail will attempt to

compare its contents to the physical folder files and update it with

new found folders.  No guarantees it will work because of its age, but

it's worth a try. "

Unfortunately using an older HIERARCH file did not work :(

So now the task to manually recreate some 600 folders. 

Boris,

There is an old discussion about HIERARCH recovery that details a process of edits to HIERARCH.PM and STATE.PMJ in order to recover from a corrupted HIERARCH.PM file.  Here's the link.  I don't have any experience with this process.

http://community.pmail.com/forums/thread/32944.aspx