Thunderbird profile folder has disappeared
Hello. Thanks in advance. I spent a couple of long evenings deleting a few thousand sent emails from Thunderbird in order to free up some memory on my notebook computer and then intended to create a new backup profile. However, when I tried to do so using the Thunderbird Export tool an "unexpected error" occurred and I discovered that there was no longer a Thunderbird profile folder in Windows/Users/[my name]/appdata/Roaming or Local. When I used the Troubleshooting Information tool to look for the folder under Application Basics/Profile Folder, clicking on 'Open Folder' did nothing. The location is seemingly 'unavailable' for no apparent reason. Thunderbird still opens and closes normally, I can send and receive emails and all my emails are still there. I have an older backup profile stored on a removable disc, but it pre-dates the mass deletion of sent emails. My question is: if I install Thunderbird on a different PC and import this older backup profile, I presume all the emails I've just painstakingly deleted off my PC will reappear, but can Thunderbird connect to the server and download my stored emails as they were most recently saved (without the thousands of unwanted sent emails) so I can create an up-to-date profile? Thanks in advance for any advice.
All Replies (3)
If thunderbird starts at all, there is a profile in place. if all your emails are there and you can send and receive, your profile is alive and well. your profile is stored in c:\users\<<yourid>\appdata\roamimg\thunderbird\profiles You can see the profile by clicking help>troubleshootinginformaition, scroll to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder'
Thanks, David. As I said, clicking on 'open folder in Troubleshooting Information does nothing, and when I navigate to the profile location in File Explorer there's nothing there for either Mozilla or Thunderbird. I'm wondering if Thunderbird's somehow managing to load from the old saved profile backed up on the removable micro SD card; is that possible?
This morning I downloaded Thunderbird on another PC to see what happened; the Sent emails folder now contains only those which were left after I edited all the unwanted ones yesterday (which is good news) but, curiously, of hundreds of emails which are in the Inbox on my notebook computer only the most recent 32 are on the other machine. However, I've just realised that on my notebook computer there are actually two inboxes for the same account; one has 32 emails in it, the other 669, plus a number of subfolders. Is one inbox stored on the server and the other locally, and is there any way of saving the 699 if I'm unable to export a new saved profile? I have no idea how this duplication of inboxes came about and as it's never really been a problem I haven't had to deal with it before.
I wonder if you may have installed thunderbird from Microsoft. It stores the profile in a different location and some features no longer work. If there is no appdata\roaming\thunderbird that I my assessment.
You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.