What are you trying to achieve in the first place?

I want to export the Thunderbird inbox and folders under the inbox and the structure. Moving to a new computer, want to export all this to a separate hard dive, then when I re-install Thunderbird on the other computer I will import them back from that other drive.

So, my questions are: If I export the Thunderbird inbox and folders under the inbox and the structure will the email messages also be exported with that folder structure export? Or... do I need to export the emails in the folders separately?

That's what I want to achieve, at least hopefully. Will be doing this tomorrow. Never had to do this with Thunderbird before, never thought about it until today so don't know, and want to make sure the emails don't get lost.

Forget about the export/import. Follow these instructions. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Move_to_a_new_PC

Mozbackup will preserve the email's and the folders also?

But Mozbackup is in beta, if it hiccups I might lose stuff. Do you use this regularly?

We point Windows users to Mozbackup because it looks after the details for you. You don't have to use it; you can copy your profile yourself. It's just files and folders.

Mozbackup has been around for as long as I've been using Thunderbird. What leads you to say it's in beta?

Ah, OK, the mozillazine article says beta. I don't know if that's current.

Find your profile, copy it. That's what all us Mac and Linux users do anyway. ;-)

Thanks for the replies so far.

This is on Windows 7 by the way...

anyway.. will copying the profile folder save all the emails?

and my original questions, rephrased slightly...

Using the export capabilities in Thunderbird if I export the Thunderbird inbox and folders under the inbox and the structure will the email messages also be exported with that folder structure export? Or... do I need to export the emails in the folders separately?

Copy your entire profile. Job done. Your messages, address books, filters, calendar data, extensions, customizations etc are all included.

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

I don't know of any surefire way to export and import Thunderbird's folder system. Most export tools save messages in a text format (.txt, .eml or .html) that, by its nature, doesn't know about folder hierarchies. Mozbackup effectively zips up your entire profile into one file, so it's not doing anything you couldn't also do by hand for yourself.

The ImportExportTools add-on will let you export your mailbox files, but why bother when that is their native form anyway? This same add-on has a tool for archiving a profile, which might be another route to follow up. You simply restore the archive to your new installation. However, I have tried this add-on in the past and it seemed to get stuck; I think large (multi gigabyte) datasets can be troublesome if not handled properly. Windows and Linux are both, in my experience, prone to freezing if asked to manipulate large numbers of files.