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Your thunderbird profile cannot be located. Why?

  • 1 reply
  • 6 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by Matt

My email service changed to Microsoft Exchange (sigh). I couldn't get Thunderbird to change the server information, so I uninstalled Thunderbird and reinstalled it, but it kept going to the old server. I moved the Profile according to your instructions, uninstalled again and reinstalled. Now it won't even open and I get "Your Thunderbird Profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." If I put the profile back and try again, the same thing happens. Any suggestions you can offer will be appreciated.

My email service changed to Microsoft Exchange (sigh). I couldn't get Thunderbird to change the server information, so I uninstalled Thunderbird and reinstalled it, but it kept going to the old server. I moved the Profile according to your instructions, uninstalled again and reinstalled. Now it won't even open and I get "Your Thunderbird Profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." If I put the profile back and try again, the same thing happens. Any suggestions you can offer will be appreciated.

All Replies (1)

Starting as long way before you.

Is exchange enabled for IMAP or do you been to get a license for EXqilla?

No point blowing things away until you have a solution going forward.

Next question is your account existing IMAP or POP? very relevant is determining if contects and old mail are required?

Finally you have obviously located the profile folders so given the path to them is %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles. Go to the %appdata%\Thunderbird folder and rename the profiles.ini file then reinstall.