Jörg-Volker Peetz wrote:
Thanks for this reply. I have just tested this, that is, clicking the "Rebuild Index" button. The process only took a few tenth of a second. This being done, I restarted Icedove, and noticed that all of the messages that had previously lost their bodies, had completely disappeared. My message list was therefore much shortened.After the already recommended backup you could also try to rebuild the index of the Inbox folder by right-clicking on this folder and choosing properties. On the "General Information" panel you'll find the "Rebuild Index" button.
So, I deleted the ".mozilla-thunderbird/" in my local directory, and re-installed the saved one. I have therefore returned to my older problem : messages older than Feb 13th no longer have bodies available.
Someone advised that I remove the following file : ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/playld2c.default/Mail/mail.teaser.fr/Inbox.msfand then restart Icedove, and that the said file would rebuild itself and re-create an index. I have tested that too. Once that file was removed, Icedove did restart OK, but the mails in the "Inbox" folder were exactly like before, that is, all subject lines were there but only recent messages could display bodies. The limit was exactly like before. This being realized, I quit Icedove and searched for the supposedly rebuilt "Inbox.msf" file. Well, I did find it, as it had indeed been rebuilt... but it only had 0 byte ! While the previous Inbox.msf file had 1811 bytes and was dated nov 28th, 2009.
Again I re-installed the old .mozilla-thunderbird directory, waiting for more advices