Transfer Thunderbird email contacts

transfer where, and in what format? Is this from one PC with thunderbird to another with thunderbird? Details in your post are lacking. Please advise.

Dear David:

Sorry. Yes, I bought a new computer HP. I want to transfer Thunderbird emails and contacts from my old Lenovo computer to new HP computer. Some, not all, of my old emails did transfer. But none of my contacts did. I have a lot of contacts, some 25 years worth.

Thanks, Wayne (715) 566-0791

OK. If your version of thunderbird was newer than 78, then the addressbook is two: abook.sqlite and history.sqlite. If you're comfortable with windows file explorer, the easiest solution is to exit thunderbird and use copy/paste to copy from old PC to new PC. that's my approach. Do this - click help>troubleshootinginformation - scroll to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder - now, exit thunderbird. you are in the profile - just paste the old two files to overlay the default ones and you're done. - restart thunderbird and you should see them.

Dear David:

I am going to pass this on to my IT friend, who is helping me. Thanks sooooo much. I hope it works! I really appreciate your great feedback. This is my first time using the help option. :-)

Happy New Year,

Wayne

Dear David:

Thanks for trying. My IT guy did what you advised. But, he said the "profiles" (all old emails) would not transfer, even following your instructions. He understood your instructions and followed them. But it did not work. Which leaves me stranded. He said I could copy over 5,942 emails one by one, by forwarding over each and every old email, making a new email into my new computer. An arduous task.

I would be happy to pay you, if you were interested to call me and walk me through the steps to make sure my IT guy was doing things correctly. I'm an idiot and do not know how to do this, especially via written instructions. Tech language is beyond foreign and comprehensible to me.

In the meantime, thanks so much for all you've done. I'm really impressed with this community help support. I'm now happy I made a contribution last week. :-)

Happy New Year,

Wayne (715) 566-0791

You mentioned 'contact's' - did you mean email messages instead? So, please be specific on what you want, as it's relatively easy to do.

Yes, I did mention "contacts" in a past inquiry. That is solved. Thank God. But, now my new issue is all my past emails. The IT guy said they could not all be moved over to my new computer. Something about the email "profiles" in my old computer, he could not move/transfer them over to the new computer.

I trust this makes sense...

Wayne

email messages are stored sets of two: inbox, inbox.msf, sent, sent.msf, etc. If you have Local Folders, look for that pattern. For example, if you had a folder called 'invoices', look for invoices and invoices.msf. The msf entries are not important as thunderbird will rebuild them (indexes). Usually, one can copy all content of Mail\Local Folders from one installation to another one and paste into the Mail\Local Folders folder. You can see this yourself:

- on old PC, - in thunderbird, click help>troubleshootinginformation - scroll down to 'profile folder' (in left side) and click 'open folder' - now, exit thunderbird - you are now looking at the profile. If you click the Mail folder, you will see a subfolder named Local Folders. Click that and you will see what needs to be copied to new PC. You could do that. the content should be copied and pasted into the same location, following the same steps as mentioned here. That should do it. Keep me posted.