This is a work in progress, and has not been fully tested.
Analysis and suggestions are based on my install:
Win98SE
Programs installed on drive E:\
Mozilla 1.6
Profiles relocated

Analysis:
Mail FOLDERS are not actual folders, other than the SUB FOLDERS, but a FILE containing ALL the messages.

When Mozilla deletes an E-mail message from the RIGHT panel THROUGH the "delete" button UI, or the "del" key, a copy is placed in the "Trash Folder" and the original message is "Marked" for deletion (no display in the list). The MSF files are indexes of the files within a folder that will show in the display.

This is true also for any message that is MOVED, only the display is suppressed. Whether an E-mail appears in the displayed list, depends on the message "X-Mozilla-Status": within the original folder/file. Once a folder is compacted, all the MARKED messages are deleted from the original file. They do not go to the Recycle Bin, as they are not a single file/message, but part of the file. If you delete with the "Shift + Del," it bypasses the trash folder but still marks the original file. If you delete an E-mail folder from the LEFT panel, a copy is placed in the "Trash.sbd" -and removed from the LEFT panel list - if you empty trash, IT IS GONE. Messages in the trash folder will remain there until you "Empty Trash" at which time they are gone from the trash folder, but still remain in the original folder (provided they were deleted from the RIGHT panel)- "marked" for deletion. The "trash folder" is treated the same as any other folder. If you delete a message from the trash folder with the "del" key or "Shift+Del" it remains in the trash folder but the "key" is set to not display in the list of messages. EMPTY TRASH and it is history.

The KEY seems to be:

X-Mozilla-Status: nnnn (n=a number), e.g., 0001
The nnnn number appears to be what actions have been taken, i.e., unread, read, moved etc. - the exact meanings I do not know. Some of the codes are listed below (no guarantee they are correct)

When a message is marked for deletion, the last digit is changed. The conventions I have found so far are:

Displayed                             Not displayed
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001->     X-Mozilla-Status: 0009
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011->     X-Mozilla-Status: 0019
X-Mozilla-Status: 0013->     X-Mozilla-Status: 001b
X-Mozilla-Status: 0003->     X-Mozilla-Status: 000b
X-Mozilla-Status: 1011->     X-Mozilla-Status: 1019
X-Mozilla-Status: 0801->     X-Mozilla-Status: 0809
X-Mozilla-Status: 0000->     X-Mozilla-Status: 0008 - Junk status - NO display

There may be others, but the LAST digit seems to be the key.

The relationship between the key digits and the actual message seems to depend on what action has been performed on the message. So far I found the following:

X-Mozilla-Status: 0009 -> Message NOT displayed - either read or unread
X-Mozilla-Status: 000b -> Message NOT displayed - messages you replied to and moved/deleted
X-Mozilla-Status: 0000 -> unread
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 -> read
X-Mozilla-Status: 1001 -> read and forward
X-Mozilla-Status: 0003 -> replied to
X-Mozilla-Status: 1003 -> replied and forward
X-Mozilla-Status: 100b -> Message NOT displayed - replied and forward and moved
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 -> This is a REPLY to a message that you sent.
X-Mozilla-Status: 0008 -> A code containing an "8" seems to have something to do with "spam"

If the original folder/file has not been compacted AND you can open it with a PLAIN TEXT EDITOR, (I used Ultraedit, but any good plain text editor with find/replace capabilities should work) you can edit the KEY as indicated above.

E.G.,
X-Mozilla-Status: 0009
edit to read
X-Mozilla-Status: 0000 (message will appear in list as "unread" or
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 (message will appear in list as "read"

And the message should be restored to display.

When editing the "key," use the conventions listed above.

It is not a good idea to arbitrarily change ALL the codes to "0000" or "0001" as this will adversely affect what Mozilla does with various components - all messages will appear as though no actions had been taken and they are "unread." This can result in a VERY large list of messages if the folder has not been compacted in some time.

Be aware that when you edit the "key" it will restore the display of any message, whether it was deleted, OR moved, or junk.

When an E-mail is received, it is added to the bottom of the existing list. Messages are stored in order of downloading. Latest download is at the bottom of the file.

This can be of value when deciding which message "X-Mozilla Status" lines to edit (restore to display). You can see how changing ALL the codes to "0000" could result in a HUGE file if the folder has not been compacted in some time.

Messages are separated by 3-4 blank lines. The first line of a message is the:

From - Tue Mar 02 17:13:19 2004 - This is the downloaded time. NOT MESSAGE DISPLAYED TIME

Large files can be reduced to smaller more manageable files by extracting out messages in chronological order and then editing them.

Please see Restore Netscape or Mozilla Deleted Mail for details of editing the file.

After the file has been edited and copied back to original account folder, You can narrow the criteria of what messages to move to "original" folder by using the "Advanced Message Search" function to filter down to the messages that you want to restore to view.

The opened text file header example:

From - Tue Mar 02 17:13:19 2004 - This is the downloaded time. NOT MESSAGE DISPLAYED TIME
X-UIDL: <40452ECC.9080505@ISP.com>
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 -Indicates Message status - as indicated above.
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 - I believe this is used for various functions of the "search & display" features.
Return-Path:
Received: from sccimhc02.asp.att.net ([127.0.0.1]) by sccimhc02.asp.att.net
(InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP
id <20040303010326.EECD20349.sccimhc02.asp.att.net@sccimhc02.asp.att.net>
for ; Wed, 3 Mar 2004 01:03:26 +0000
Received: from mchsi.com (12-218-146-253.client.isp.com[12.218.146.253])
by sccimhc02.asp.att.net (sccimhc02) with ESMTP
id <20040303010325im2008861pe>; Wed, 3 Mar 2004 01:03:25 +0000
Message-ID: <40452ECC.9080505@ISP.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 17:03:08 -0800 - This is the Message Displayed Time.
From: someone
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: somebody@ISP.com
Subject: testing

This is basically how I think it works.

Captjlddavis

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