Thunderbird Community Forum

I have posted another question about my corrupted TB profile and restoring it. Having done the restore and looked through the profile folder it is clear that this is full of old files that are no longer supported/needed.

Is there a utility that removes these old files?

I'm not sure if TB updates should remove them but it doesn't appear to have done so.

When I read https://kb.mozillazine.org/Files_and_folders_in_the_profile_-_Thunderbird it is clear that there are so many of these that doing it manually would be prone to error. That resource also says it does not know what some of the files actually do.

Is there a better resource that lists just the latest files maintained by Mozilla?

If I do a new export does it only export the files it needs? The last time I ran an export the resulting zip did not contain all the files from the TB installation but I have no idea why.

I have copied Thunderbird folder from C:users\maris\AppData\roaming on old PC. Had it working on the new PC, but it suffered an unrecoverable error during a windows update after only five days. Other reinstalled apps now running OK, but have been unable to replicate the successful installation from a few days ago. Found additional profiles in profiles.ini and deleted them. Made no difference!

I have moved my Thunderbird data from drive C:\xxx\Thunderbird to N:\xxx\Thunderbird. The Thunderbird program remains on "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird" How do I tell Thunderbird to find its data on the N: drive?

     Thank you,    Art Lieberman

Hi I am an older person and have lost my profiles on thunderbird email - one is shinemetalpolishersltd@xtra.co.nz and the other is sandbrookruralcontractorsltd@xtra.co.nz. We are in NZ and accidently deleted the Thunderbird profile and not the corrupted new profile I was setting up. Thank you. Gloria Sandbrook. I still have sandbrookruralcontractorsltd@xtra.co.nz on my phone for communication. Cheers.

I am using Thunderbird 140.15.0esr and have noticed that my Ashampoo Backup is not able to store my Thunderbirs files any more. I have looked up how to find the Thunderbird files and the posts mainly say :

C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\

But when I follow this path there is no Thunderbird folder in Roaming as shown in the attached screen shot

Can you help please.

Ian Hulley

I have an email account that I have had for several years and I run it under Thunderbird. I have recently opened a Gmail account and understand that I can operate this under the same Thunderbird (I haven't tried it yet so expect a few glitches on the way, as per usual! There are plenty of articles covering this, so I live in hope)! Potential problem is: I have backed up my old profile account regularly and know how to do it (though I've not yet had to restore it and of course hope I never will), What worries me is that if I follow the procedure to add Gmail to my Thunderbird (and it works), will I get a single profile covering both email accounts which I will be able to back up in the way I am used to; or will I get 2 profiles including a new one for Gmail so I will need to back up both? A simple question but I haven't seen the answer anywhere yet!

John Wilson (john @wilson48.plus.com)

Hi, I have multiple profiles on my computer. How do I make sure all emails on the older profiles is on my profile I am now using? I would like to delete old profile 16+gb but want to make sure all emails are in the profile I am presently using. I think all emails are in present profile but would like to make sure. I have other older profiles but they are small in size. Trying to recover some disk space on my ssd.

bonjour, J'ai installé un nouveau profil, mais j'arrive pas a utiliser l'icone -sélectionner messages à droite au dessus des mails- appliquer ces paramètres/la vue... Ca me serai utile pour simplifier et unifier mes affichages. Actuellement j'observe aucune changement, bug ou erreur de manip.

Helping a friend with her HP-i3 PC running Windows 11 that I setup in March of 2025. It was a new PC purchased from BestBuy in March 2025.

I had to restore the image backup of her C drive that I did in March 2025 because of a Windows problem that I wasn't able to resolve. Now that problem is resolved but Tbird has the old profile folder without her new email contacts. (Unfortunately, I did not remember to use Tbird to save a backup of her profile folder before doing the restore.)

She has a recent image backup so I can extract Tbird's profile folder from that backup. What would be the correct procedure to replace the current profile folder with the one extracted from the recent backup?

(don't currently have access to her PC so don't know the version number of Tbird currently installed)

Trying to solve aperformance problem I tried to move my profile from C:\Users\Peter and Carol\Profiles\sjig3laj.default to "C:\Users\Profile\." -- when that did not work, I was unable tomove back to the original location, TB telling me "Local directory path ... is not suitable for message storage". How do I get back to the config that worked before ? (was just slow)

I installed Thunderbird on my new laptop, then imported the profile from my old laptop

The main screen has, under "Inbox", folders for Drafts, Sent, Trash, Archive and Spam, which are being used by the program

Folders for Drafts, Sent and Trash also appear under "Local Folders" (along with Outbox) and these aren't being used by the program.

How do I get rid of these duplicate folders? "Spam" had a delete option, so that was easy, but the others don't.

I tried the two suggestions for a previous "Duplicates" question but they didn't resolve things.

Thank you

My computer recently updated to Thunderbird 155.0. The Local Folders did not move along with all my contacts. I have backed up mu Local Folders and contacts into a file into a file. Using the forum I have cut and pasted all of these into the Local Folder in the new Thunderbird but they are not there in the new Thunderbird. Please explain how to restore them in the new Thunderbird. I would suppose i will have the same issue with Address Books and would appreciate help there as well. Many thanks for your help!

TB guidance is to maintain separate profiles for dual-booting (Kubuntu and Win11), rather than sharing the profile. That adds to IMAP churn, but also to disk space, of course. But the biggest concern is keeping Local Folders (a very large archive which is by far the largest part of my profile) coordinated: both sides must access the same Local Folders.

The option to specify "Message Storage" for Local Folders obviously addresses that problem: both Kubuntu and Win11 can have the same NTFS Local Folders storage. At the same time, each IMAP account also has the option to specify its own "Message Storage" "Local Directory" location outside of the profile folder. That suggests two obvious questions:

1. Why not specify shared storage for each account, as well as for Local Folders?
2. After Local Folders and all accounts are shared, then precisely what, from each profile, cannot be shared between Kubuntu and Windows? Does this bring us back to asking why the profile cannot simply be shared?

[Years ago, when my email accounts were POP, I had no problem sharing a profile between WinXP and an earlier Ubuntu variant. (Of course with POP, they had to share.) Is today's separate-profiles guidance related to IMAP accounts or to some other change in TB design?]

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.

When I opened Thunderbird two days ago it came up with the following message: To use your current email address, fill in your credentials. Thunderbird will automattically search for working and recommended server configurations. It asked for Full Name; Email: and Password. Fearing it was a scam I filled in my server settings manually. My server is Centurylink but my email address is embarqmail.com so when I filled in my info the send was smpt.centurylink.net port 587 (which was fine) The problem was with receive: I guess my old setup was pop.embarqmail.com port 110 and I put in pop.centurylink.net port 995 which is what Centurylink's website called for. Well this one worked and it downloaded 800 messages but no saved folders and the Thunderbird screen layout looks different from the one I am used to. A few minutes later the pop.embarqmail setup downloaded the same messages but still no saved messages. It looks like I have 2 profiles. Did the last one I entered override the old and wipe out files I had stored. Is there a fix for this mess I have created and can I retreive my old folders and messages? I tried doing a system restore and it didn't work due to corrupted files. Oh, I'm still using windows 7. Thanks

Copilot has prepared a message for me: Subject: Thunderbird always loads corrupted profile and ignores new profiles

Message:

Thunderbird is stuck loading the same corrupted profile and always shows the welcome screen, even when I create new profiles.

I used the Profile Manager via thunderbird.exe -p and created new profiles (“Clean” and “Clean2”). Both profile folders exist in %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles. However, Thunderbird still launches the same original profile every time.

Even when I select “Clean2” in the Profile Manager (with “Use the selected profile without asking” unchecked), Thunderbird ignores the selection and loads the old profile. Safe Mode (thunderbird.exe -safe-mode) also does not disable the welcome module.

This appears to be a profiles.ini corruption or a profile lock issue, because Thunderbird is not switching profiles even though the Profile Manager shows the correct selection.

Could you advise how to repair or reset the profile configuration so Thunderbird will actually load a new profile?

Thank you.

I have a previous Thunderbird account, which resides on another computer. On my current Desktop, I downloaded Thunderbird, went to open and it says "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I went this route because my original Thunderbird has many customized Files to which I put emails into. I can't figure out how to recreate that profile as your instructions are quite impossible to follow. Remember, most of your users are like me, a bit under the standard as far as programming skills. So, how do I get either: my original profile to be imported to my new computer, or, better, just open my new Thunderbird so I can use a different, newer set of email addresses? This is my preference. Please advise.

With a new Windows11 install on a new drive, I can't get my saved emails, folders, and passwords to my new Thunderbird installation. I tried copying the profile folder from my old Windows10 per instructions, but Thunderbird doesn't recognize it on this new Windows11 install.

I have a profile set that uses IMAP and need to change this to POP. I have tried changing the settings and tried creating a new profile by exporting folders and files but nothing is working correctly.

One problem I have is that in the IMAP profile I now have a second email address that is the same address name but is a POP setup. This is confusing. When I use the POP email to export and then import into a new profile I again get two email addresses in the folder panel of the new profile and one of them does have folders but they are empty.

Below is a screen shot of the original IMAP Profile. The upper address has folders but they are now blank because I pasted them in the lower address. I have tried selecting/highlighting the lower address for exporting but when I do I get the two addresses but the folders are empty/blank.

Thank you for any help!

Rick