Thunderbird Community Forum

I'm abandoning Windoze for Linux Mint Mate. The original Win11 Laptop is still available - no cloud connection, the Windows account exists but is unused. The laptop has all my Thunderbird v146.0.0 (64 bit) mail, address books, calendars.

I have a refurbished PC, came with new-install Win11. Now dual-booted as a Linux Mint 22.2, Mate desktop. The Win11 partition is unused and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

I use gmail since TalkTalk finally terminated access to my Tiscali account. (I dropped TT many years ago.)

I've setup Thunderbird on Mint, can't see how to find its version. It came from the Mint default setups. Gmail is working but missing all the 'Local' stuff. The calendar has a few of my auto-repeat entries but none of the random ones. Some of my address books are missing.

I remember from the Win10 > Win11 migration that I need to move the 'profile'. It will be large but I have big-enough USB memory keys. And no, the machines are not network linked. I don't trust Microsoft and won't allow any of their corrupted stuff any access to my new kit.

Guidance needed:

• What needs to be moved? From where on Win11?
• Where to put the stuff on Mint. How to migrate it?
• Any problems to watch out for?

Help please? Links to resources? Forum posts, online guides, wise words? Or 'just do it this way!'

TIA PeteS

Hello. Today, gone through updates from 115.10.1 to 115.18.0 to 128.14.0 to now 140.6.0 and still cannot shut down Thunderbird in one profile, to then be offered a choice of profile and changeover. It just would not today do that. Instead it re-opens in the original profile, without the profile selection box. Any solutions? Thanks.

Oct 23, 2025, 19:35 CST

I FINALLY was able to find the original profile, all messages in the In Box, plus all folders with their contents. 'Lost' when our ISP's ' tech support person ' had me close/remove the TB POP3 account and create an IMAP account).

I need to merge the new small profile (In Box & with basic folders) into - onto the BIG, original, profile. So each time I get/check mail everything goes to, ends up in, the Thunderbird account containing all the OLD data and new working account.

Please remember I am barely TB literate, so start at 1 (A), not 27 (Z)& no tech words. Nor acronyms please.

Thanks! Remain in GOOD health, be WELL, 'n be

• • SAFE!**

Robin

Hi, I am extremely frustrated at my situation: I have a desktop (main computer), laptop and mobile phone all using Thunderbird, with a GMAIL account (IMAP) On my laptop I accidentally deleted the contents of the Archive (Thunderbird folder) and promptly ALL EMAILS AND HISTORY of emails wer LOST on said laptop. They subsequently disappeared on my mobile phone also. The delete action was also uploaded to GMAIL.com and I could not recover them there as it said I am using a different program. I then went on my desktop in offline mode and all my emails are there in Thunderbird (minus approx 5 days worth while the desktop remained offline (no big deal).

I have tried EVERYTHING to back up/export the profile from my desktop (while offline) and upload the mails onto my laptop to recover them and hopefully feed them to GMAIL. Nothing happens, they do not appear. I see all my emails within the thunderbird profile folder in a "IMAP.GMAIL.COM" folder but not in a "Mail" folder (is that relevant)? Is the laptop loading the emails then immediately deleting them, because it is syncing with GMAIL? I am so so lost. Please help. Thank you

Hi I had a systems crash and did a windows 10 reinstall. Windows created a folder windows.old. In the folder is users/"username"/appdata/local and roaming/thunderbird/profiles/ In the profiles folder for example I have a profile 34eu8280.2020. I transfered this folder to the newly installed thunderbird folder under roaming/thunderbird/profiles/ Next windows+r entered thunderbird-p. Create profile, entered 2020 as profile name, chose folder, entered 34u8280.2020, select folder, finish. In profile manager selected 2020, work offline, unchecked use selected profile without asking at startup, start thunderbird. Profile not showing up only account setup page.

At a lost as to how to proceed.

Any help would be appreciated in restoring profiles

Stan

My C: drive is almost out of available memory and the following profile, jrqu4wd0.default-release, is the culprit. If I delete it what affect will it have on Thunderbird.

Systemordner Thunderbird umbenannt und neues Profil erstellt, alle E-Mail Konten neu integriert, Teste i.O.,

Aus alten Thunderbird Ordner war plötzlich keine Profilordner mehr vorhanden? Wieso plötzlich das? Sicherungen hatten leider auch keinen Profilordner von Thunderbird gesichert. Warum werden diese nicht gesichert?

Thunderbird switched automatic to Freedom. No possibility to avoid. All connections where lost. After input connection data mail where downloaded. But over 2000 old local stored mail are gone.

How to restore all old local mails, structure and archives?

Hello, i am currently woking on an issue inside of the latest version of thunderbird. We have the data file for thunderbird located on the desktop. It shows as 37gb of data. however when we try to open the data file from inside of thunderbird. We cannot see any of the information from the folder. If i go all the was into the data file directory and select sub folders, they will open inside of thunderbird and show correct data. however, when i set thunderbird to open the entire directory with its sub folders, the application does not display any of the sub folders or information from inside the folders. We have attempted to go into properties and repair the file from inside thunderbird. It shows as 0kb file inside of thunderbird. it shows as a 37gb folder on the desktop. Once again to clarify, i can access specific directories inside the data folder but not the data folder as a whole. Any support or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks You

I assume there was an automatic update overnight. When I started Thunderbird this morning I was asked to enter our account information - which I did. However I had no Local files. I have a copy of the Thunderbird directory from two months ago - I copied this in to the Thunderbird directory in Local Apps/data but i still have no local files data. I have several years of saved emails that I want to keep available. Any Suggestions how I can resolve the problem.

Three weeks ago I attempted to migrate my TB profiles from a 2014 mini-mac to a 2024 mini-mac. I thought I did a better job of backing up my profile using CCC than I actually did. In the migration to the new Mac I lost all my subfolders from the last 20 years. Apple created a new Profile and 2 restoration Profiles on the new Sequoia based mini-mac. I wasn't familiar with these and panicked. I copied those files, took them back to the original mac and tried to follow Toad-Hall's method of restoring the subfolders recommended to bmack1 on 23/11/22. However, I failed to carry out the step of going up two levels in the path of the Library to copy the entire "Thunderbird" file and only copied the Largest restoration file. This in turn, "contaminated" the 2014 original Thunderbird mail profile and only an Inbox and Trash subfolder remained. Today, after 3 weeks of searching and reading the generous contributions of this community, I came across a post explaining that the "sbd files" will show the subfolder headings I created in the original sought after Profile. And I found it!!! My problem is I have re-read Toad-Hall's method of re-installing the original Profile and tried to carry that out to the letter by placing the old Profile within a Thunderbird folder and switching it with the current one. But it's still listed as the "Restoration qqg...file" and probably shouldn't be, but I don't want to go any further and risk losing it because I feel I almost have it. So any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

I backed up Thunderbird and reloaded it after I had been hacked in gmail, but now I have 2 profiles accessing the same gmail. One shows the gmail address and the other is my old "local" profile. The old one has my typical 16000 emails, while the new one shows 30,000 emails with no doubles. Can I delete the new one?

Hello, I am using Time Machine to backup my Mac, but the tool excludes Thunderbird. In settings I have not excluded any files. My Thunderbird folder is fairly large, 25GB - thanks to the great archiving features of Thunderbird, How can I include Thunderbird folder to backups? Thanks in advance for helping. BR Tapio Heikkila

Hi,

I have transferred Thunderbird to a new computer. It opens fine, but it's looking for me to enter new info all over again.

So it looks like it is not finding the right info in the profile.ini file.

Please tell me how to fix this, and let me know in which folders the email information is stored, in case I need to back up all my emails.

In my Thunderbird email client I have 4 email addresses.

The program is in: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe

The Profile Folder in Thunderbird itself lists: zvhtqvg2.default-release-1

But in AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profis lists 2 files: 0jyd0ev.default-release zvhtqvg2.default-release-1

In Windows(C)\Users\ted\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird the profiles.ini file list the following:

[Install746F856C10C5FA7C] Default=Profiles/0jyd0ev.default-release Locked=1

[InstallD78BF5DD33499EC2] Default=Profiles/zvhtqvg2.default-release-1 Locked=1

[Profile1] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/0jyd0ev.default-release Default=1

[Profile0] Name=default-release IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/0jyd0ev.default-release

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1 Version=2

[Profile2] Name=default-release-1 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/zvhtqvg2.default-release-1

Thank you, Ted

I've read the articles on moving Thunderbird to a new computer. My old computer died but I have a full backup and have replaced the Thunderbird directory a number of times according to the instructions to move TB to a new computer. I have even uninstalled and reinstalled TB to match the version on the old computer (140.4.0.0). It comes up and shows over 8,000 emails, but ALL are in the inbox and none of the probably hundreds of folders and sub-folders show up. I have found some of the names in the Profiles directory but they don't appear in the TB window.

Got up this morning and stared up Thunderbird as I always do but got a 'new account dialog'. All of my emails, folders, settings, etc. are gone. Went through the Help - Trouble shooting process to find the old profile. There are three profiles listed in 'About Profiles' and if I launch with any of them, all I get is a new setup. Freaking out here as I have 10 of thousands of emails, in multiple email accounts, in a relatively complex folder structure which includes online and local folder storage. I have a feeling that Thunderbird updated last night and is the cause of this problem.

Running Windows 10 Pro v 22H2, build 19045.6332 . Thunderbird 140.3.1esr (64-bit)