Hello,

To me it seems like you are talking about a Clean Install you can do so by following these steps:

Certain Thunderbird problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Thunderbird's program files and then reinstall Thunderbird. Please follow these steps:

1. Download the latest version of Thunderbird from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ and save the setup file to your computer.
2. After the download is complete, close all Thunderbird windows (Click Exit/Quit from the menu button on the right).
3. Delete the Thunderbird installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
   • Windows:
     • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\
     • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\
   • Mac: Delete Thunderbird from the Applications folder.
   • Linux: If you installed Thunderbird with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Installing Thunderbird on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Thunderbird Download Page, simply remove the folder thunderbird in your home directory.
4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Thunderbird:
   1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
   2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to open Thunderbird after clicking the Finish button.

WARNING: Do not run Thunderbird's uninstaller or use a third party remover as part of this process, because that could permanently delete your Thunderbird data, including but not limited to, extensions, emails, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device!

Please report back to see if this helped you!

Thank you.

Sounds like they WANT to delete all data and messages.

If you accounts came back, you never deleted the profile. It is not magic. Thunderbird gets account info and settings from your profile folder.

Did you have Thunderbird closed when you "deleted" the profile the first time? If not you need to.

Many thanks for your help, but I still have the problem. Yes, I have several times uninstalled Thunderbird, deleted all the Profile folders I could find, using %appdata% and just plain old visual search of the folders, reinstalled Thunderbird as per the directions and then signed back into my account at the server. Though I've been assuming that the problem lies with my Profile, perhaps I'm wrong, and perhaps the problem lies with my account on the server. Here's what I'm trying to do: I accidentally deleted some older email messages and I want to get them back. They are still on the server: I can see them on the Outlook Webmail app under "Deleted messages," and when I click on some of the messages to restore them, they move to the Webmail inbox, which is where they should be; but then as soon as Thunderbird is started, the restored messages vanish right back to the Webmail deleted folder and never show up on Thunderbird. Perhaps there's another way of getting them into Thunderbird, but I don't know it and I can't find any directions to do so.

Thanks again.

go to %appdata% and delete the Thunderbird folder. it is that simple.

Thanks, but unfortunately I have tried that -- over and over again, deleting the Tbird folder, emptying trash, reinstalling Tbird, and none of it solves my problem, which is the inability to deal with IIMAP messages that I have restored in webmail. Perhaps I'd better try a different email problem - too bad, because I've used Tbird for years and like it very much. But if it can't do the job, it's of little use.

Somewhere -- probably on a Mozilla site -- I was told, when uninstalling Tbird, to do it through the Windows Control Panel, and NOT through the Uninstall that show up under c:\ProgramFiles(x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\uninstall.

In my effort to uninstall Tbird completely -- .exe files, profiles, and all the rest of it, I've obediently stayed away from the above Thunderbird uninstall program. Perhaps that's a mistake? I'm a bit nervous about trying it for fear of making a bad situation worse, but I do wonder why, if Tbird's own uninstall program carries dangers with it, it exists at all.

Thanks again.

Ok a seriously doubt you have deleted the folder I told you to. If you had the next time you started Thunderbird there would be like a new install (without uninstalling and reinstalling.)

So this time go to the start menu, type %appdata% in the search box, press enter and delete the Thunderbird folder. What I have told you to delete is the data folder that keeps coming back, or in extreme cases the pointer to it. It is totally unaffected by uninstall and installs after it is created.

Just an FYI. When you run uninstall from control panel, the uninstaller that resides with the program, or it's installer (whatever the program registered in the registry) is launched. There is no magic that windows does. So every time you uninstall you launch the uninstaller that your worried about using.