re :After she opened her mail yesterday, and received a message requesting that she get a new email address with choices of sign me up, no thanks take me to my email and then got into a loop with the same questions. after many tries to get to her email, a new account was created, but this built a new prefs.js file.

This sounds like Thunderbird started up and for some unknown reason could not locate the 'profile name' folder, so it created a new profile name and then asked to create mail accounts in that new profile.

This should have left you with two 'profile name' folders in the 'Profiles' folder.

One option would be to continue to use the new default profile name, but copy paste across the files containing emails. Note: 'profile name' folders are usually called 'xxxxxxxx.default' Thunderbird must be closed whilst doing this.

Open the original 'profile name' folder. click on 'Mail' folder. This should show the pop mail account and 'Local Folders' mail account. click on pop mail account to open. copy all the files and folders.

Access the new 'profile name' folder. click on 'Mail' folder. click on pop mail account folder. Paste those files and folders into the new pop mail account folder.

If you had emails in the 'Local Folders' mail account, you can also copy paste those files from old to new 'Local Folders mail account.

Start thunderbird.

Protecting the unknowing.

Covering my red face.

OK. I'm embarrassed by the edited replies above. Please ignore my lack of knowledge.

I did follow the suggestions above. I copied the mail.comcast.net and Local.Folder files. However, the new profile doesn't find them.

• The old and new profiles look almost alike.
• Should I backup and then delete the old profile? or the new one?
• Is there another place that TB looks to find the profile?

Thanks.

Bill

My advice would be to…

Copy the whole profile, and not try to dissect it.

You shouldn't need to delete any profiles. Either edit the profiles.ini file, or use the Profile Manager to select the old one.

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

Having said that, copying message stores from one to another should work. But I'd want to rescue the old profile, because it contains filters, junk training data and the Address Book.

With the help of a friend, I have fixed the problem. We were able to resurrect the profile. Still not sure what caused the problem in the first place.

Do you use CCleaner?

We did not use CCleaner. That's a candidate to run at my next opportunity.

bworthin said

We did not use CCleaner. That's a candidate to run at my next opportunity.

I would set it to exclude Thunderbird files if you do. It is most likely the root of your problem in the first place if it was on this computer.