A most annoying thing just happened. My PC (Win 10 64-bit) crashed when Pegasus Mail was running, and when I rebooted and opened Pegasus Mail again, I got an unexpected message stating that I was using and older version of the program.

Somewhat bemused I clicked through the notifications, and then found out something even more unexpected. In the Folders Window, the tree structure of filing trays had completely disappeared. Now all my folders, hundreds of them, are in a single list one after another, in alphabetical order. Tedious to say the least.

Is there a way to get the filing trays back? My mailbox is backed up daily, so if there's a file missing, it's likely I can retrieve a copy from yesterday.

The Tray structure of the Folder list is stored in a file named HIERARCH.PM. That file gets checked at every Pegasus Mail startup and updated with changes at every Pegasus Mail shutdown. The crash likely corrupted the file requiring Pegasus Mail to recreate it on its next startup. That recreation is done by polling each folder file for the needed information. Unfortunately this results in the loss of all Tray structure. You can try restoring HIERARCH.PM from a backup. That should work if the backed up version is recent enough. Do it with Pegasus Mail closed.

Hint: What you experienced is not uncommon. Having a backup is the best way to recover. Some of us prefix our folder names with a reference to the parent tray. That way, in the event of a HIERARCH rebuild, the prefixes will make it easier to created the Tray structure again. An example would be if you had a Tray named "Family". Each folder in that Tray might then be prefixed with "Fam_".

BTW, I am curious about the message you mentioned about using an older version. I am not aware of a version checker in Pegasus Mail. Please post everything you remember about that message.

Thanks, Brian. That worked. Unfortunately I don't remember very much, only that there was a version number that I didn't pay much attention to, claiming to be a more recent version. And I was offered a tutorial of features, which I declined.

Later I also realised that my settings under Tools/Internet Options had also vanished, but they were preserved under the Receiving and Sending tabs' Add buttons, and could be brought back from there.

The loss of the selected POP3 and SMTP hosts is unusual. It makes me think that PMAIL.INI was also affected by the crash. PMAIL.INI holds most of the configuration settings so a review of settings in Tools > Options would be prudent. Perhaps a comparison of the current one with a backed up on would be an easy way to check for any variances.