What are the crash id's? https://support.mozilla.org/kb/mozilla-crash-reporter#w_viewing-crash-reports

PS : English is my native tongue, excuse the grammar and spelling mistakes.

Hi Matt. Thank you for helping.

Here is the crash ID : 647e11d2-ab19-4388-947b-7a02c2140401

And a link to the crash report : https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/647e11d2-ab19-4388-947b-7a02c2140401

And a dxdiag.txt : https://www.dropbox.com/s/9svxbyu21ylil5o/DxDiag.txt

Jack, I do not have a solution, but more questions. I have a bug number, but that does not really help a lot. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=917961

In Outlook Express, is it possible the "depth" of the nested folders is or exceeds around 200 characters? (Outlook Express uses a DBX file folders.dbx to hold folder names and tree structure. Thunderbird uses folder paths in the file system (which in windows are still limited to a total of 255 characters) and the way windows installs the appdata folder, it is a long path just to get the the root of the Thunderbird profile.

Would there be a single folder with more than 4Gb of mail in it? (DBX size would be a good indicator I would think), or more that 32000 mails?

The DXDiag is showing Operating System: Windows 7 Professionnel 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)

How are you running outlook express on that?

I'm not sure to get the idea of your second paragraph. The .dbx files are indeed located in a deep folder. The folder path is made of 142 characters : 'C:\Documents and Settings\François\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{D21C7963-323D-4EB5-BD2C-79046C367552}\Microsoft\Outlook Express'. But if you add to this path the inside path displayed in Outlook Express, which is like 5 levels deep, you might get something exceeding 255 characters -not sure to make myself clear here-. According to the person I'm working for, there is no folder containing more than 32,000 mails, and the largest .dbx file is 1,99GB large.

Anyway, I'm not running Outlook Express with the computer from which I got that crash, I just copied the .dbx files from the former computer (using Windows XP) to do an importation with Thunderbird. You might suggest me to install Thunderbird on the former computer, import the mails, then copy the profile to the new computer. I tried and it failed : Thunderbird is crashing after some minutes, during the importation. The crash is very similar on both computers.

I join you 2 crash ID's and a dxdiag.txt from the Windows XP computer.

• First crash ID : 9e22494e-9280-41c4-b287-f547d2140331

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/9e22494e-9280-41c4-b287-f547d2140331

• Second crash : 9ab5d56e-97f2-44b3-92ca-df2d72140331

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/9ab5d56e-97f2-44b3-92ca-df2d72140331

• Dxdiag : https://www.dropbox.com/s/i6n5zlh9h9j8vmc/DxDiag2.txt

Now this is where it gets interesting.

Thunderbird is not supposed to be able to import mail from DBX files as stand alone. It requires Outlook Express DLLs to do the job. The fact it is working at all is a little troubling really.

____________________________________________________________________________

Second paragraph C:\Users\François\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\[random string].default\mail\local folders\ is where Thunderbird starts storing mail

What I was asking is if any of the internal paths in outlook express (cumulative length for nesting) when added to that string might exceed that 255 limit windows imposes.

___________________________________________________________________________ 'C:\Documents and Settings\ does not exist in Widows 7.

Windows 7 for backward compatibility redirects requests to 'C:\Documents and Settings\ to 'C:\users\

In the case of Thunderbirds profile, it will be

C:\Users\François\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\[random string].default

When copying from the old to new PC, 'C:\Documents and Settings\ François\Application Data\Thunderbird goes to 'C:\users\François\Appdata\roaming\Thunderbird

If the copy includes the Thunderbird folder and all under it, the profile.ini file in the Thunderbird folder will be copied and as it contains the path to the real profile folder Thunderbird will find the location when it starts. (it must not be running when profiles are copied.)

This copy only applies if you have not modified the default locations of profiles. But at this point I doubt it.

Ok, I was writing when you posted, so the beginning of my post may sound totally unrelated, but the end is not

I just tried a software, Undbx. Its purpose is to convert .dbx in several .eml. But file tree is still missing. So it was no help.

I also tried importating .dbx from a folder near the hard drive root. It still results in a crash. Here are some new crash ID's (I don't get why these ID's keep changing).

• f0b436ff-b1b8-4f43-8bff-c856a2140404

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/f0b436ff-b1b8-4f43-8bff-c856a2140404

• a3cc7a28-2cc8-4e6b-a90e-faaf22140404

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/a3cc7a28-2cc8-4e6b-a90e-faaf22140404

About your last answer : You find troubling that importation process might even start without Outlook Express on the computer. But Thunderbird asked me for a folder where mails were stored when I requested an Outlook Express message importation. So I guess Thunderbird detect the fact Outlook Express is not there and take instruction from the user for being able to do it. Anyway, I think you're right, the path would exceed the 255 characters if the importation worked. Now, I have no idea how to deal with this problem. Could I force Thunderbird to store profile near the root in order to reduce path lenght ? Would it work ?

Dear Matt.

I can proudly announced the problem is solved !

In 'accounts settings' (not sure of my translation here), I set the mail storage folder to a new one, near the hard drive root, then launched the importation. And it went just well, keeping up the file tree and all.

Thank you a lot for the informations you gave me. I wouldn't have found out the path length is limited to 255 without you. You rock, sir ! I owe you.

Keep up the good work. Thanks again.

Sincerly yours,

Jack

PS : Some information on this issue on the database would be welcome I think and I'd happily participate.

Jack I asked one of the developers and it appears the import uses the DLLs from Outlook Express, Windows Mail, or Windows Live Mail depending on your version of Windows.

I need to get some small DBX files and experiment with this. New documentation may be required I think.

Hi Matt.

Here is your .dbx : https://www.dropbox.com/s/aygffislgl0jr8g/Lettre%20Darrouzet.dbx (1,13MB)

I'll continue to follow this thread. You can reach me here if you need any additional information or file. Thank you.

Jack, How did you manage "importing small amounts"?

I'm on Win7 importing to TB from OE files created on WinXP, it got thru about half of my folders ok, then the rest of the folders were created but empty. The files are on a thumb drive, so I don't think the 255 character limit is the issue. No folder over 125MB, so it isn't the size. I thought maybe there was a limit on the number of messages and posted a question on that, but no response yet.

I'd just like to get the rest of the folders transfered and be done with it.

Marie

Your problem simply can be resolve by using an e-mails conversion utility like (removed) which is really assured and consistent to preserve data. Simply run this recommended utility & convert DBX files into EML because this will made easy to import large count of emails into Thunderbird. It is fully supported with each Windows OS & includes simple process. With trial you can get how to embedded scenario.

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