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recovery of Thunderbird data

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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

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During a recent outage Thunderbird "send" function was disabled. This has happened before during previous Internet service maintenance On this occasion the thunderbird .exe program was employed which resulted in creation of a new email service, even though email address was the same etc.. The new account 'eventually' reloaded the inbox with current messages, however the address book is empty and the file structure of saved info is also deleted. Q. Is it possible to recover the data which did not reload ??? email address is "[edited email from public] @tpg.com.au"

During a recent outage Thunderbird "send" function was disabled. This has happened before during previous Internet service maintenance On this occasion the thunderbird .exe program was employed which resulted in creation of a new email service, even though email address was the same etc.. The new account 'eventually' reloaded the inbox with current messages, however the address book is empty and the file structure of saved info is also deleted. Q. Is it possible to recover the data which did not reload ??? email address is "[edited email from public] @tpg.com.au"

Modified by James

Chosen solution

I attach an image of the profiles folder.

Cannot see "88tg3ugz.default-release" so no "abook" or "idap" files Of the other folders,"kvz3q18t.default-release" has plenty in it .... see image of the "abook" files

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kkiely31 said

Images below are the full contents of 88tg3ugz.default-release-1, in sequence A .... C I cannot see Name, Date .... etc

Not sure what your problem seems to be because I can see them in your images - they are the column headers which I asked to be displayed.

but I can see some "abook.sqlite" files without "history.sqlite"

As everything is in Name sort order there will be several files between those listed as starting with an 'a' and those starting with a 'h'. Hence why 'history.sqlite' is visible in the second image. It says you have some data in that address book 320KB. This address book is usually set up to collect email address you send to which are not in any other address book.

Also cannot see "prefs.js", or any ""Idap" files so there are no images to post

You posted an image showing the 'prefs.js' file - it shows in the last two images. When a file has a .js extension it means it is a javascript file. File Type: Javascript In the image it is called 'prefs' because you do not have the option selected to display all extensions.

There are no 'ldap' files. That data was in the 'prefs' javascript file.

Cannot see "88tg3ugz.default-release"

No. It does not exist.


"kvz3q18t.default-release" has a larger personal address book and it looks like this was the profile you were using at least until the 9th November.

Please try to get Thunderbird to use that profile.

  • Menu icon > Help > More Troubleshooting Information
  • Under 'Application Basics' near the bottom - click on 'about:profiles'

It opens in a new tab You will see:

  • Profile: default-release
  • Default Profile no
  • Root directory C:\Users\kkiel\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\kvz3q18t.default-release
  • Local directory C:\Users\kkiel\AppdaData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\kvz3q18t.default-release

There are buttons immediately below:

  • RENAME REMOVE SET AS DEFAULT PROFILE LAUNCH PROFILE

Click on 'Set as Default Profile' Then click on 'Launch Profile' Thunderbird should open in a new window. Now close the original Thunderbird window.

It may need to download files etc. Check the address book.

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