After migrating to new server and losing seach capacity in T-bird, I deleted "profile" on my computer and now cannot access T-bird at all! Help!
I was directed to wipe out the Thunderbird "profile folder" in order to allow it to "re-build" itself, and thus restore its capacity to search through emails, which had been lost after migrating our webmail to new web host. We found the folder (finally) and deleted it! We now cannot access Thunderbird AT ALL, even after multiple trashing it and re-uploading the application again and again. The same error page comes up: 'Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." Are our 15 years of emails, etc, now lost forever and how can we get back onto Thunderbird? PLEASE HELP!
Chosen solution
Multiple accounts can be added to the same profile, starting from File/New/Existing Mail Account. You may have to give the 2nd account a different name if it's on the same domain, e.g. gmail1 and gmail2.
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To restore the global search capacity, it's usually recommended to delete one file in the profile folder, not the entire folder.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database
If you don't have a backup, you may be able to at least recover mail in IMAP accounts by setting up the accounts again in a new profile (IMAP mail is stored on the mail server).
If you did actually delete the profile folder, the error you're seeing is probably due to TB reading the profiles.ini file (in the .../AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird folder) which points to the missing folder.
Hi
You need to locate the profiles.ini file and remove this file as well. You removed the profile folder on the hard drive, but Firefox uses the profiles.ini file to map profiles you see in the Profile Manager with a folder on the hard drive.
- ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/profiles.ini
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data
(~/Library is a hidden folder)
You can use the Profile Manager to create a new profile.
Thank you, sfhowes! That worked! I had (2) email addresses through this webmail…the second one seems to not be present…do I need to completely reset a new profile folder for the second email address as well? can you walk me through that? Thanks!
Chosen Solution
Multiple accounts can be added to the same profile, starting from File/New/Existing Mail Account. You may have to give the 2nd account a different name if it's on the same domain, e.g. gmail1 and gmail2.