Instructions on moving Thunderbird Filters does not work for me,
I installed Thunderbird on one of my PCs some time ago, and defined a number of filters to move mail to local folders. This has been working for some time.
I just installed Thunderbird on a second PC, and used published instructions on copying my profile to the new system. Most of this worked, the account was set up, local folders were copied, etc. For some unknown reason my account information did not actually connect, even though everything in Account Settings looked exactly like my first system: so I deleted the account and set it up again and everything is working EXCEPT the filters. Both PCs are running versions of Windows 7, I'm running the same version of Thunderbird, and I set up the account by entering my gmail.com address and password and took the defaults.
I have looked at instructions for moving filters from one system to another, which involves moving the msgFilterRules.dat file, but I see a problem that nobody else appears to have reported. Even though my first system has 44 filters defined, they are >>> NOT <<< stored in the msgFilterRules.dat file, which only has the 'version="9" logging="no"' header. I have looked everywhere, in every file I can find in my profile and in the full config page, and I can not find any of my filters defined anywhere. But when I pull down "Tools", "Message Filters" they definitively exist and work.
There is one surprising difference between the two PCs.
In the first one, the server setting is for POP. I was also connected to copper.net for a while which might account for this, or it might have been my choice: I did this some time ago. It's working just fine, but there is no Imap folder within my folder, which is where other articles say the filters are stored.
The newer installation uses Imap, and there are msgFilterRules.dat files in the Imap folder and in the local folders folder, but they don't contain any filters because I haven't manually defined any there.
So my question appears to be: if you're using POP instead of IMAP, WHERE are the filters stored? As I said, I very definitely have filters in Thunderbird in my first system which uses POP, but they are not where any article says they should be, and I can't find any article here or anywhere else that says how to copy message filters in this configuration.
All Replies (4)
Filters for POP follow the same rules as for IMAP; they're stored with the account, which is in the Mail\accountname folder.
It appears that there is a completely different problem involved here.
There is only one account on my system.
There is supposed to be only one profile, since there is only one account.
When I go into "Troubleshooting Information" and press the "Profile Folder" "Open Folder" button, it takes me where you would expect the profile to be on the "C" drive, and there are the files and folders you would expect to see, including a Mail folder. There is only on msgfilter.dat that isn't empty, and as I said, it just has the placeholder.
Part of the problem is: this isn't the actual location of my profile. Even though all of the files are dated properly and are correctly named, there is a profile folder is in a different location and there are two places where there is a POP folder. There are two different places where there is a <profile>.default-release root folder, both have the same (correct) profile name, Thunderbird help points to one of them but appears to be accessing both of them.
I'm going to have to do some more research to figure out why there are two different locations where different pieces of code and information are being used and updated.
I did find a msgfilters.dat file that contains the actual rules, so I'm going to try copying that to my new system.
Modified by Bart Lederman
My reply was correct; the majority of POP accounts are in Mail\ folder, not Mail\Local Folders folder -- but that immaterial here. If you are seeing an empty msgfilterrules.dat file, then you are probably looking at the wrong account or in the wrong profile.
I thought I updated this reply, but it didn't seem to work, so I'll try again.
When I use Thunderbird Help to find my profile and click on the Profile Folder button, it takes me to a folder on the C drive in the expected location. The various folders and files look correct, and the date stamps indicate this folder is being used.
But there is another <profile name>.default-release root folder in a different location. The profile name is the same, and it also contains a pop.gmail.com folder, but the filters aren't there either. There is a 'generic' Profiles folder where there is a gmail.com which contains the msgfilters.dat file that appears to contain the filters.
I don't know why my configuration is so different, but it all appears to be working properly, and I think I have the filters file now.
Modified by Bart Lederman