What's the best way to find a consultant to help with a complicated TBird migration problem?
I used Eudora for years, then migrated to TBird. For reasons I don't recall, I had to drop it. In trying to bring it back, I messed up something somewhere. My old Inboxes are there, but TBird cannot find/read them. Obviously I don't have a backup. I'm looking for someone I can hire on a project basis to help me restore my old TBird folders and messages. I'm a reasonably savvy user, but this problem has stumped me completely. Thanks.
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Did you just install V68 and loose everything in which case this is probably the issue
https://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com/2019/09/i-lost-my-profilemail-on-update-to.html
What has your recent issues to do with Eudora import. Perhaps I am misreading you. But it does not sound like Eudora has much if anything to do with the missing mail.
Matt, thanks.
The issue has nothing to do with Eudora import, which was done years ago. Sorry.
I'm currently running V68.3.1.
I ran through the steps in the procedure you cited.
On startup, I still get this message: Profile Missing. Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.
I am therefore not able to launch Thunderbird.
Your prefs.js file may have become corrupted. This article explains how to check for that issue:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared#Corrupt_or_empty_prefs.js
If you don't have a backup, there may be older versions, such as prefs-1.js, prefs-2.js... in the profile folder that are not corrupted. Barring that, it's always possible to create a new profile from Help/Troubleshooting, about:profiles, or with Profile Manager, and then copy mail from the old profile to the new one.
^^Previous msg was partly helpful, thank you.
By renaming my previous profiles.ini I was able to start TB.
I then tried ImportExportTools NG to import my old mbox files. This appears to have worked for all the mbox files in my prior "Local Folders" directory, but it failed with all but one of the mbox files in the proper server folders (all the files in pop.gmail.com etc.). The one it worked for is ~500KB.
When I try to import the other files in the server folders, I get the following message:
>>"Inbox" seems not to be a mbox file or is a corrupted mbox file
It's hard to believe it's a file size issue, as some of the mbox files in "Local Folders" are approximately the same size (4GB) as the ones in the server folders.
So, I'm making progress but currently stuck.
You can bypass the IET NG add-on and copy the mbox files directly into the Mail/Local Folders subfolder of the profile, while TB is closed, and see if the folder appears under Local Folders in the Folder Pane when TB is restarted.
There are a number of free and commercial 'mbox recovery' tools that may be worth considering.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recover_messages_from_a_corrupt_folder
Folders appear but there are no messages in any of them.
Did see the file splitting approach but am hoping not to have to go that route.
Not sure why all files in old /Local Folders would be OK, but none of the files (save one tiny file) in the 'server' folders would all be corrupt or otherwise problematic.
I honestly don't remember if the corresponding accounts were set up as LDAP or POP.