Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

How do I reopen an old profile rescued from a dead computer?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by sfhowes

natescape
natescape
more options

First things first: I'm on a Mac. I know that can affect things.

So my old hard drive developed critical I/O errors and wouldn't boot. I managed to rescue the Thunderbird profile folders from the hard drive and bring them over to a different system, but I'm unable to get Thunderbird to recognize or import the email profile, etc. I've looked for, and can't find, the profiles.ini file.

Ideas? I have about 7 years of messages that I don't want to lose (and a ton of notes I kept in "Drafts").

First things first: I'm on a Mac. I know that can affect things. So my old hard drive developed critical I/O errors and wouldn't boot. I managed to rescue the Thunderbird profile folders from the hard drive and bring them over to a different system, but I'm unable to get Thunderbird to recognize or import the email profile, etc. I've looked for, and can't find, the profiles.ini file. Ideas? I have about 7 years of messages that I don't want to lose (and a ton of notes I kept in "Drafts").

All Replies (1)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

If you just need to import the mail folders, see this article. To make TB recognize the entire profile folder, you could Create a new profile with Profile Manager and then run TB with that profile, but that is a bit more complex than simply importing the mail folders.