I did uninstall thunderbird today. I found two versions, uninstalled them both. When I reinstalled it found my old profile folder and it's back the way it was. Heh. I guess I should make a new profile and add all my accounts, and then find a way to import the mail.

so did all that uninstalling and reinstalling actually do anything? I would not have expected it to. But your post is not clear.

No, no change from that. I really didn't expect any change, especially when it found my profile and used it.

I guess it wasn't my intention that a new installation of thunderbird would find and use my old profile. The one I'm having trouble with.

lets back up a bit. Where you asked at some point to restate your accounts like as if this was a completely new Thunderbird install?

Asked to? No. That was the solution I figured out on my own, but that didn't work when the brand new shiny thunderbird installation found my old profile. I just created a new blank profile and am currently downloading mail. My busiest account, 57,000 messages. I am currently struggling with thunderbird wanting to probe servers for settings that I already know. I can't see a way to put the server settings in manually without the program trying to help me. That seems pointless to me. I was a mail administrator in a previous life so i do know how to set things up.

Is there a completely manual way to configure accounts, or is there a way to import accounts only from the other profile that I had? Without importing the folder structure, which is what I want to get rid of.

Not really a manual way no. But the process for major providers is to download pre set settings from the database.

So you managed to locate your old profile but it had something wrong with it. I am really not sure what you want it to do if it is not in the list of Folder "Views" in the view menu. But I see no reason to restart the process if you have found your profile. It would be almost impossible for you original mail to not be in there somewhere.

I would be doing things like deleting foldertree.json from the profile folder to see if you could force a regeneration of the cached information.

If I delete foldertree.json will the folder structure be reset to the default with all the mail still there? That would be helpful.

will it fix the issue? I don't know as I am not entirely sure what you issue is, other than something not looking as you think it should.

But it will possibly as the deletion causes a folder pane cache rebuild. There are other files that cache data however, so it is only a might.

I deleted the .json file and that did straighten things out a little. I now see the mail that I haven't seen come in for 24 hours. I have been working on organizing things but that is a very slow process. Copying old mail from the old folder to the newly appearing folder for my most used account. A very slow process, about 1 or 1.5 messages per second. A tall order with over 100,000 old messages. So it will take time but at least I can now find new mail.

This is a thunderbird installation I have been having trouble with for a while. It works just not well. I had a big bug thread on bugzilla about this one, it has that collision problem where if it was receiving messages and I click get messages again I would get 17 windows saying to wait until processing is completed before getting messages, each of which had to be dismissed by me. I laughed about that. "What is this, a user training effort? 'you clicked too quickly, click more slowly.'" That was just a bad architecture. A double click, absentmindedly or intentional hangs the whole system? What if no one is there to click the button? It never needs to check mail again?

That's another reason I want to replace this whole installation. Something is odd here, more than meets the eye.

Ok, this is all getting somewhere. The thing I don't understand, in my folder list on the left I have email accts that look like an envelope with a lock. Under each of those I have various folders, sent, drafts, bulk, etc. And I can make more of those for filtering. I see how to set those to receive mail in the folder settings, and maybe in filters though I haven't gotten that far.

I also have some accounts that are not represented there. Some are in folders in local folders, some are nowhere to be found though I do have the accounts set up. In the accounts there are pulldowns to place sent mail here, etc. But any that do not have the icon on the folder that looks like and envelope with a gold lock, I can't set where the mail goes because any subfolders, even that I create now in local folders are not on the pulldown.

I want each of my email accounts to be represented with an envelope and lock and subfolders for organization. How can I change this? Thanks in advance.

re :I also have some accounts that are not represented there. Some are in folders in local folders,

Do you mean you have some POP mail accounts that are shown in 'Account Settings' window, but those accounts are not listed in the 'Folder Pane' and instead the incoming emails for those pop accounts are appearing in 'Local Folders' mail account ?

If yes, those pop mail accounts might have been set up as deferred accounts or more commonly known as 'Global Inbox', so they use 'Local Folders' Inbox instead.

To force those 'Global Inbox' pop mail accounts to be listed in the Folder Pane so each account has it's own set of folders, check out this setting.

• Menu app icon > Options > Account Settings
• Select 'Server Settings' for the missing pop mail account.
• click on 'Advanced' button
• Select 'Inbox for this account'
• click on OK

• Select 'Copies & Folders' for pop account
• Make sure all the 'Sent, Archive, Drafts, Templates' options are using eg: 'Sent' folder on pop mail account.

• Select 'Junk Settings' for pop mail account.
• Make sure 'Move new junk messages' is using the 'Junk' folder on pop mail account.

Repeat the above for any pop mail account currently using 'Local Folders' folders instead of it's own account and folders.

• click on OK

Exit and restart Thunderbird.