https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

Okay, so shit out of luck then. There is NO backup profile, there is no "other" profile from the earlier installation, there isn't SQUAT! I reinstalled Thunderbird thinking well, hell, I'll just restore the old profile, then spend a few months forwarding some 500 Family E-mails with attachments to myself. Yah, right! Thunderbirds storage may make sense to a bunch of geeks (who've never been in the REAL world), but REAL people want files, they want images, and they want to put their hands on them when THEY need 'em, NOT when some program decides to cough 'em up. I am 100% Shit Out Of Luck because of your file system. More than 8 months of family photos and files GONE (including my now BOTH-DECEASED parents!). wonderful. Off to uninstall Thunderbird, AGAIN, AFTER I forward 42 messages I TOLD IT TO NOT DOWNLOAD, that it downloaded AS SOON as it started up...damn program!

OKAY, HOW do I get Thunderbird to STOP DOWNLOADING E-MAIL AUTOMATICALLY?!!! I want to FORWARD the 42 messages to myself, then UNINSTALL Thunderbird, then download my forwarded messages with a real E-mail Program (Eudora Pro). Thank you!

If it's downloading messages then they must be on the server. So you don't need Thunderbird…

Wrong. As soon as Thunderbird downloads the messages, it REMOVES them from ALL mailboxes on the comcast.net server (including the Sent box AND the Trash Box. It downloaded (i.e., removed) all E-mails that WERE on the Comcast.net server. How do I STOP Thunderbird from automatically downloading anything so that I may forward the already downloaded E-mails to myself (since Thunderbird prevents copying of individual files and images) so that I may download them with another E-mail program?

Ok, it is clear there is a problem here, but your description does not match what occurs in the mail protocols.

Deleting mail from the inbox is something that a pop account can do and there is an expectation form some old time email users that it will. However POP can only see the inbox. Nothing else. So it can not delete mail from the send or trash

IMAP on the other hand can see all folders on the server. But the mail is synchronized with the server. For mail to be deleted on the server in IMAP there are only a few conditions.

• You deleted the mail in the mail client.
• You deleted the mail on the server
• You moved the mail to a folder other than one in the mail account on Thunderbird, such as a local folder, precipitating a delete on the server as the mail was moved "out of scope"
• Your mail provider has an auto aging system of emails with retention policies that see old mail removed after a time.

So having read your assertion I have no idea how what you describe could be occurring. It is difficult to offer a suggestion on how to stop something that one does not consider possible.

Now. To some of your other points.

An email is a single collection of ASCII character (Or these days UTF). Eudora does not do UTF but everyone else does so it sends mail basically no one can read without all sorts of uglyness.

You may also find that Eudora's ability to connect to mail servers becomes strained. Since is went out of production SSL has been replaced by TLS and TLS V1.2 has replaced V1. So most servers that require SSL will not work with these old programs for much longer. If they work at all now.

Importing.

When Thunderbird imports mail it does not remove anything from the original store. So if it imported Eudora then wherever it imported from the mail is still there. Exactly as it was before the import started. So I suggest you contact Eudora Support and ask them why your copy of Eudora is not finding your mail.

Thunderbird does not remove it's profile folder when it is uninstalled. That is not to say it can not be manually removed, perhaps by one of those uninstaller programs. But we are not able to stop people doing destructive things on their own computer. Much as I would like to at times.

Attachments are not files. There are text. That Eudora made is simple to store them somewhere else and modified the mail body to remove the encoded text in the mail body notwithstanding. This does not work with signed or encrypted mail unfortunately so the ideas from the 1980s where disk space was expensive will not be appearing again. and email About as close as you will see are EML files. EML's are e-mail messages saved to a file in the MIME RFC 822 or MIME RFC2822 format used to transmit the emails.

One of the real problems Eudora users have in Migrating to another platform is their attachments rarely go with the mail. So there is an immediate loss of data.

You want files. Seriously, Mail clients are designed around the concept of "they manage mail" Fiddling with stored mail and generally tinkering under the hood is the cause of more corruption that just about anything else. However dragging an email to a folder in the file system will make is into a file.

The import export tools add on also export mail into file. It even offers some formats that guarantee the mail will never be an email again. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

So how about we start with some facts about your situation and your install of Thunderbird.

• Did you delete your Eudora mail data? Or run one of those stupid registry cleaners that would have removed Eudoras entries?

1. Did you delete the Thunderbird profile from your previous installation?
2. When you type %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles into the run window (ctrl+R) is there one profile folder or more?
3. Is the account you have created in Thunderbird IMAP or POP?
4. Please add the troubleshooting information to your post

To find the Troubleshooting information:

• Open Help (or click on three-line-icon and select Help)
• Choose Troubleshooting Information
• Use the button Copy to clipboard to select all. Do not check box "Include account names"!
• Paste this in your post.

I apologize for my frustration, I know that Eudora Pro is Archaic, at best. I used to be a WebMaster in an earlier life, and understand the basics of Thunderbird. I do not understand its filestructure for E-mails (from a logic standpoint, not an english one...I understand what you're saying above...undoubtedly it's to greatly enhance the security over the Swiss Cheese that is Eudora Pro).

1. No, I did not delete the Thunderbird Profile, I deleted the program using Micro$oft$ Uninstall <Start><Default Programs><Programs and Features> and right-click <Uninstall> on Thunderbird. I don't recall whether I was asked to save User settings, but if I were, I would have saved them. 2. There is only one profile in that path, the one created when I reinstalled Thunderbird this morning. 3. Comcast.net is an IMAP Mail Server. 4.

 Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 45.1.1
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.1.1
   Profile Folder: Show Folder

             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20160526140950
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (imap) imap.comcast.net:993, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: , smtp.comcast.net:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

 Crash Reports

 Extensions
   Lightning, 4.7.1.1, true, {e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}

 Important Modified Preferences

   Name: Value

     browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.filesystem_reported: 1
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
     dom.apps.reset-permissions: true
     extensions.lastAppVersion: 45.1.1
     font.name.monospace.el: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-cyrillic: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-unicode: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-western: Consolas
     font.name.sans-serif.el: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-cyrillic: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-unicode: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-western: Calibri
     font.name.serif.el: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-cyrillic: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-unicode: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-western: Cambria
     font.size.fixed.el: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-cyrillic: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-unicode: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-western: 14
     font.size.variable.el: 17
     font.size.variable.x-cyrillic: 17
     font.size.variable.x-unicode: 17
     font.size.variable.x-western: 17
     mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
     mail.winsearch.firstRunDone: true
     mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: 2a41661c-6d91-4857-97f3-cf9ca19b783
     network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
     network.predictor.cleaned-up: true
     places.database.lastMaintenance: 1456271185
     places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858
     plugin.importedState: true

 Graphics

     Adapter Description: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
     Vendor ID: 0x10de
     Device ID: 0x13c2
     Adapter RAM: 4095
     Adapter Drivers: nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
     Driver Version: 10.18.13.6175
     Driver Date: 1-22-2016
     Direct2D Enabled: false
     DirectWrite Enabled: false (6.2.9200.17568)
     ClearType Parameters: ClearType parameters not found
     WebGL Renderer: Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0) -- OpenGL ES 2.0 (ANGLE 2.1.0.316930d51ea9)
     GPU Accelerated Windows: 0

     AzureCanvasBackend: skia
     AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0
     AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
     AzureContentBackend: cairo

 JavaScript

 Incremental GC: 1

 Accessibility

   Activated: 0
   Prevent Accessibility: 0

 Library Versions

     Expected minimum version
     Version in use

     NSPR
     4.12
     4.12

     NSS
     3.21.1 Basic ECC
     3.21.1 Basic ECC

     NSS Util
     3.21.1
     3.21.1

     NSS SSL
     3.21.1 Basic ECC
     3.21.1 Basic ECC

     NSS S/MIME
     3.21.1 Basic ECC
     3.21.1 Basic ECC

Hope that helps? Again, I apologize for my frustration. Losing both parenti, AND 8-10 months'-worth of E-mails hit us both pretty hard! Allen

lets try some assumptions.

go into the profile using windows explorer open the mail folder. Is there a comcast folder in there? how much space does it occupy?

Local folders? again how much space does it and it's sub folders occupy?

I have a feeling that a new profile was not created and your old mail in in that profile in a sub folder of one of those. but I am guessing and assuming a lot here.