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I just upgraded my desktop pc from Windows 10 to 11, and before the upgrade I used the Tools Export function to export my complete Thunderbird profile, so I could import it after the upgrade. Unfortunately the export file cannot be read on my upgraded pc using the Import function - Thunderbird gives me error messages every time, that suggest the exported folder might be corrupted or invalid.

My IMAP emails are fine, as I have set those accounts up from scratch and the folders have now populated with all the emails - the problem is all my filed emails, dating back many years, which were all stored manually in a filing system under Local Folders.

I tried manually copying across the individual files from the extracted back-up folder into my live Thunderbird profile and then reopened Thunderbird...which worked to some extent...as in, all the folders are there, but no emails are showing! It shows no messages under each folder, even though if you look under the Profile you can see that the email files exist.

I tried various ways to bring them in, including zipping one of the folders and trying to import from the zip file (which also brought in a folder but no emails) but even though the email files are clearly there under my profile, Thunderbird shows 0 messages in all my Local Folders. It's as though it is unaware the files exist, so I suspect it needs them to be formally imported somehow?

I would hate to lose the emails, as they document important information and purchases etc over many years, along with archived emails for my charity work, social events, etc. As I said, I can see the files are there but simply copying the files to my profile has only worked to the extent the filing 'structure' is visible, Thunderbird doesn't display any of the emails.

I have included two images...one of my Thunderbird Local Folders as they currently look, and the other showing the backed up files existing in my Profile, which I hope are helpful.

Can anyone help please? I am running a desktop PC on Windows 11. Thanks, David.

I run Thunderbird on a PC, and, to free up space on Drive C:, I have moved the contents of the folder Thunderbird in Appdata to Drive D:. I then changed my Server Settings, in Thunderbird, from C: to D:, and note that any new mail is indeed now appearing there along with those already transferred. This move could save me a valuable 6 gig of space, and more in the future, however, I am unable to remove that original Thunderbird folder entirely, notably I am unable to remove the contents of the Profiles folder, as it is still linked to the application. Notably with cookies.sqlite, cookies.sqlite-shm, store.json, mozlz4, aborted-session-ping and many others, which I note some have continued to be updated. I have been unable to find any other settings in Thunderbird referring to Drive C:, other than those in Server Settings.

I could presume that if I installed another version of Thunderbird on Drive D: and maybe moved those existing contents of the Thunderbird folder on C: onto Drive D:, and made those numerous settings changes to the App it could work. But I ask is there an easier way to complete this move? How can I complete this transition of Thunderbird from Drive C: to Drive D:?

so i use ome tv on Firefox using user agent switcher EXTENSION. but when i connect to ome tv i cant flip the camera option in the down left it wont flip and it lags when connecting with other people please fix or help

I am having a problem with receiving emails that are someone replying to an email I sent. I don't hear back from them and when I give them a call to see why they haven't responded they say, yes they have. So I go and type their name in the search bar at the very top and it shows me their responses and says that the email is in my inbox but it isn't! How do I figure out where these emails actually are and how can I get it to stop doing this?

and I immediately began scrambling to get it back. I found this somewhere: "Don't Delete Files" is the preferred option because it saves the old profile's folder and allows you to recover the files to a new profile. So that gave me hope because that's what I had clicked (unfortunately, it was right before I saw the cancel button over on the right). That's what I get for being in a hurry I guess.

Anyhow, after 4 days of reading support forums and tons of trial and error, I'm no closer to restoring that profile than when I first started (although I've learned a lot about what does NOT work).

Btw, both my profiles have always been set up as POP3 at Gmail, although if I ever get this current problem sorted out I'll be shopping for a different POP3 provider. But that's another story.

I know how to create a new profile with Profile Manager. And I found the Profiles folders under both Thunderbird folder as well as ThunderbirdOLD folder. Have I been on the right track so far?

In the Thunderbird/Profiles folder, I don't see a folder with the deleted profile name (except the new ones (duds) I've since created ). On the other hand, I don't see the name of the profile that I did NOT delete either, but somehow it seems to be working just fine. Maybe it's the ".default" folder or ".default-release" folder? I've only ever had two profiles and I may have created the non-deleted profile first, so did that one end up being named .default? -shrug- I have no clue.

Anyhow, in the ThunderbirdOLD/Profiles folder, I also see ".default" as well as ".default-release" folders too. But in addition, I'm seeing a ".deletedprofile" named folder. So that's where I originally thought my several dozen email folders with several thousand emails and Address Book etc are hiding. But I've copied all the above mentioned folders into the several new Profiles I've created, on a trial and error basis but so far..... no luck. All I get when I open one is the new set up screen to set up a new pop3 account.... which I can do, but that's just starting from scratch without any of my saved data. I'm running out of ideas.

Where am I going wrong?

I'm in the process of cleaning up Thunderbird e-mail before moving to a new computer. I started with 11,593 e-mails in my Inbox and 7,799 e-mails in my Sent folder. I'm now down to 7,634 in my Inbox and 4,965 in my Sent folder. I've allocated 2 weeks for this process and found that it's taking me about 3 hours per day to meet my daily goals. I'm finding that I'm spending at LEAST half the time responding to "Empty-Trash/Compact-folders" requests. There are times I can delete 50 e-mails at a time without getting a request. Other times I will try to delete ten e-mails and get the request. With the old version of Thunderbird I could literally delete hundreds of e-mails at a time. Can you help? Russ Bukwa Yardley, PA ps. I have intentionally given you specific numbers. Based on my software- and test-engineering experience, I speculate you need to create a stress test to solve this nagging problem.

Three weeks ago I attempted to migrate my TB profiles from a 2014 mini-mac to a 2024 mini-mac. I thought I did a better job of backing up my profile using CCC than I actually did. In the migration to the new Mac I lost all my subfolders from the last 20 years. Apple created a new Profile and 2 restoration Profiles on the new Sequoia based mini-mac. I wasn't familiar with these and panicked. I copied those files, took them back to the original mac and tried to follow Toad-Hall's method of restoring the subfolders recommended to bmack1 on 23/11/22. However, I failed to carry out the step of going up two levels in the path of the Library to copy the entire "Thunderbird" file and only copied the Largest restoration file. This in turn, "contaminated" the 2014 original Thunderbird mail profile and only an Inbox and Trash subfolder remained. Today, after 3 weeks of searching and reading the generous contributions of this community, I came across a post explaining that the "sbd files" will show the subfolder headings I created in the original sought after Profile. And I found it!!! My problem is I have re-read Toad-Hall's method of re-installing the original Profile and tried to carry that out to the letter by placing the old Profile within a Thunderbird folder and switching it with the current one. But it's still listed as the "Restoration qqg...file" and probably shouldn't be, but I don't want to go any further and risk losing it because I feel I almost have it. So any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

I have 10 email accounts in my Thunderbird 115.12.2 (64-bit) and I am using Microsoft Windows 10 Pro and all my sent, draft, archives and templates are going into a different folder. I want them to go into the folder from which the email was sent but they are all going into the email tinakeeling@att.net.

I have changed it to reflect the correct folder but then a few days later and every time I restart Thunderbird the program changes the folders back to tinakeeling@att.net

I have even unchecked the box "place a copy in" and when Thunderbird is restarted it reverts back.

What can I do to fix this issue?

See attached picture of what I am talking about

Hi.

Why every time i run thunderbird and if i leave it open too often it bring me the error message for all hotmail/outlook mail accounts i have???

What the heck is happening and how i can solve this?

hi in a new win 10 instal most text incl Fire Fox text is made up of letters [font] that are made of thin and thick lines [in the same letter]

i dont know if its a strange font or another problem, i have copied all "font" setting from my other pc where i dont have the problem.

also i cant get spell check to work here dsespite turning it on

its very distracting, would be very gratefull for any suggestones if any one can 

help thanks

When I upgraded from MacOS Ventura to MacOS Sonoma, Thunderbird stopped working. Getting it to work the first time required me to use Apple's 2 Step Verification process to create an app-specific password. After the MacOS upgrade, that process was no longer available. Apple switched to 2 Factor Authentication, which is apparently different and incompatible with 2sv. The other websites and applications on my iMac have already switched to 2fa, and I'm not sure I can have both methods active on the same computer (but I've asked, Apple, anyway).

Is there a recent change in Thunderbird that would allow me to use 2fa instead of 2sv to access Thunderbird?

I have many years worth of emails in Thunderbird that I can no longer access. I can see the directory structure, and some of the email lists, but not the content.

Thanks for the help!

I'm running Firefox 122.0.1 on a Windows 10 desktop PC, with a profile which includes a userChrome.css file which makes several layout and cosmetic changes.

I also have a laptop (also Windows 10) which has an old Firefox 97.0.1 installation, and I'd like to make the same changes on this machine which I'm used to on the main computer. I copied my desktop profile to the laptop, to the same directory as its present profile, but when I rebooted Firefox the transferred profile wasn't recognised.

While doing the transfer I received error messages about some of the folders: Destination path too long. This despite the fact that the registry flag to accept extended paths is set to 1. I had to skip several folders in order to complete the transfer.

Could this be the reason why the new profile isn't being picked up? Or is it because the two Firefoxes are of different versions?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts. Many thanks.

I can no longer send messages through the email client on one of my accounts using Thunderbird, which no longer recognizes my internet service provider's password (but it does receive messages). Everything works fine with my other accounts.

Thank you for your help.

I have a new laptop and did a backup of my files on the older laptop (Windows Home) and restored them to the new laptop (Windows Pro). Then I installed Thunderbird on the new laptop and I already had e-mails on it. But there are thousands of e-mails in the wrong folders.

The Windows Home has Thunderbird 128.10.oesr (32 bit) and the Windows Pro laptop has Thunderbird 128.9.2esr (64 bit). What should I do? Should I uninstall Thunderbird on the new laptop? Then what?

I need to do something with a profile folder, right? But what?

Please help.

It's a mess right now.

why just today is all my incoming emails coming to trasha nd not my in box in Thunderbird worked fine in the morning but i am not getting any mail in my in box it is all going to trash

items dragged to overflow menu pop back out, will not stay there - dunno how to fix this.

Hate the "puzzle piece." Involuntarily upgraded to 115.25.0esr and it lost all my bookmarks, addons, history. How do I know which profile was the most recent, before the update added a new profile? How do I find my addons from the previous version? history?

Hello, I'm using the most recent version of Thunderbird on a desktop using Windows 11. Just this morning (Aug 11), all incoming email to all my four accounts are coming in with no subject or correspondents showing and when opened the email is not formatted in HTML, just plain text and lots of code. I have tried several fixes with no success: repair folders, turn off all add-ons and anti-virus protection, uninstalled and reinstalled software. Can you help, please? Thanks!

I updated my desktop browser today and now there is an expandable sidebar at the left margin of the window showing tool icons for Tabs from other devices, History and Customize sidebar. I can see how to remove tool icons and how to expand or collapse sidebar but can I remove the sidebar completely? Is this an option? I prefer the old look with the browser web page content extending all the way to the left of the screen, without the narrow vertical sidebar.

I just installed 3 Add-ons Free Memory, Free Memory Button and Ramback but, apart from them showing on the Add-ons Manager, I can't find them let alone open them.................Does anyone know where they could be or what happened? Thanks in Advance