User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30) Build Identifier: 3.0.5 Need option of manual setup at begining ! Automatic setup picked IMAP instead of POP for my emails, and deleted my Inbox file that I previoulsy added in path. Thunderbird seems to think local storage was not needed. I lost all my emails ! I hope when installing new thunderbird that user get possibility to do manual setup for pop/smtp without having automatic detection/setup right at the begining, or a protection layer that protect inbox file to be overwritten by initial file. Now I feel really sorry for myself to not have made backup. Please add protection for basic user like me. Reproducible: Didn't try Actual Results: lost all my emails (original inbox file got deleted) Expected Results: any previous inbox file should be protected from deletion if user ever change any settings POP/IMAP

This is after re-installing windows XP, so I imported my previous email box by just moving the inbox file to targeted location prior to launch account setup wizard.

You can choose imap over pop after detection. So did you check if your pref.js file and profile.ini to see if both where pointing at the same file on disk. foind so should ensure for you a proper migration from one machine to the other.

Hi Ludovic, My email inbox is on D: drive (previous TB point to there) I reinstalled Windows on C: drive for other reasons ( TB + preferences got removed from C:) I installed latest TB after windows is done, and when adding account I cancelled when asked for the automatic setting, then changed directory pointer to my D drive first. Then can not add server setting without automatic wizard. So I had to lauch wizard, which picked IMAP for me. At that point I though wizard was smart and correct, I trusted it too fast & I accepted , then TB re-initialized inbox file (on D:) = deleted my previous emails ( which is my professional inbox.. quite annoying. I am sure there are ways to not make this mistake, but point is that TB need mechanism to avoid such confusion or prevent deletion of not empty inbox file. I know my mail/smtp setting, I just needed to do it manually, and without being confused by the software. I did "agree" on what TB picked but it is because I may have clicked too fast ! TB should warn me that inbox file ( over 1GB) would be deleted and if I really agree ! Please I hope a check on inbox files can be added for dump people like me. Btw I did not have to do "import" since my previous mail box storage was already at good location on my d: drive, just had to change path before setting the account server info.

previous version of TB did not lead to this problem, I did this methodology many time.

where should we go with this?

I think the wizard could warn that the provided (or automatically chosen) directory already contains some files. Is this problem confirmed?

This could be remedied by setting the local directory directly in the account wizard (bug 360679). Also in the account manager, if the user picks up a local directory via the browse button and it already contains any files, TB could warn about it and ask if it is OK (often it is, the user may want TB to pickup files after a reinstall). Bwinton, would that be acceptable? I'd take this part of the solution. (Also adding some links to bugs that do other interesting checks on the local directory.)

I'd plug this in the checking framefork created by bug 577775.