Background
Many small organizations and home users use various third party email clients to fulfill their respective requirements. To meet this, some of the most inexpensive cross platform email and chat applications are available, such as PowerMail, Claws Mail, Thunderbird, Spicebird, AppleMail, Entourage, and Opera. However, these preceding mentioned email clients support MBOX file format to save and use the email data files. But, many times these MBOX file gets corrupted or damaged because of unmanageable or unending size of email messages. But, apart from this, the exact cause of corruption of these MBOX files can be easily deduced by analyzing the internal structure of MBOX.
What is the Internal Structure of MBOX File?
MBOX file is a 7-bit ASCII text file that contains the folder name, but no file extension. It can also be called as email database because it stores collection of email messages. In addition, email messages in MBOX file folder is stored in such a way that each new message is affixed at the end of the previous message with a single separation line and contains one empty line to mark the end of the message. You can view these MBOX file on text editor, but you are unable to view embedded headers, and processed HTML tags, which complicates the simple view of email messages. However, many third party email apps are available to view and manage these MBOX file, such as Thunderbird.
How Thunderbird Email App Manages MBOX File?
Thunderbird is an open-source email or chat application used for managing the MBOX file format email items. This email app stores email messages in a folder by utilizing the MBOX format. Thunderbird uses .msf extension file to cache information associated with the folder list. Along with this, it also creates the index file to map the folder names systematically. Apart from this, you can identify your inbox folder in the MBOX file as inbox.
As you are already familiar that the MBOX file stores each and every message in the order where latest email message is saved at the end of the previous message. Furthermore, each email message has From_Line and blank line before and after a message, respectively. The Line, described in the preceding statement, starts with character F, r, o, m, space, time & date. Thunderbird email apps also uses these characters and definitions along with the X-Mozilla-Status: and X-Mozilla-Status2: headers. These two headers are responsible for explaining the current status of email messages, which are determined by predefined numbers and flags such as MSG_FLAG_READ, MSG_FLAG_REPLIED, MSG_FLAG_PRIORITIES, MSG_FLAG_NEW, and MSG_FLAG_TEMPLATE.
How Corruption Originates in Thunderbird MBOX Folders?
As email messages get accumulated in the MBOX file folder, Thunderbird email app is unable to track all email content because of lack in clarity, which is required to define the beginning and ending of each email message. Hence, in such cases, Thunderbird starts deleting email messages accidentally due to active Junk settings. Because of this, discrepancies are created in the MBOX folder, which leads to the corruption of MBOX email items. However, you can compact the large-sized MBOX files using the Thunderbird application to implement the precautionary measure for avoiding any corruption. But, the process to recover corrupt MBOX files cannot be handled by the Thunderbird application itself.
Solution: Kernel for MBOX to PST
Kernel for MBOX to PST is the ultimate result-oriented email migration software, which not only recovers corrupt MBOX files, but also migrates them to Outlook supported PST file. The software has rich graphical user interface and supports various MBOX supported email apps, such as Thunderbird, PocoMail, Spicebird, AppleMail, Entourage, Eudora, Evolution, SeaMonkey, Postbox, Netscape, Opera, PowerMail, and Claws Mail. The software preserves the formatting, properties, and structure of email items even after complete conversion.