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Purchased new laptop. Used export tool in Thunderbird to external HD. Traded in old laptop. Installed Thunderbird & attempted to import my email profile. Import tool requires zip file, but the only file on my external HD is a .default file. I'm getting new email but none of my old emails. Consulted Best Buy Geek & he determined the import tool didn't work properly because the export was missing required files. We further determined the export backup must not have worked properly.

The 'Sent' file in my 'Mail' folder exceeds 3 GB (3,224,360,399 bytes) and is not being read in the TB Mail window. How can I reduce the size of this file AND save messages???

'Sent' message folder IS searchable!!!

Hi all, I have a client who uses Thunderbird and wants to close his orange.fr email address, but has thousands of emails he needs to be able to continue to refer to / archive. I advised to move all the emails from the IMAP server/inbox folder, to a Local folder in Thunderbird. Having done this, I tried to remove the account, did NOT check the box “Remove Message Data” and (wrongly assumed) there would still be a way for him to see his orange.fr emails in a local folder somewhere, but they all disappeared. I’ve tried to trace the path for the local folder but can’t see a way to see them once the account is removed. Can any suggest the best way to GUARANTEE that he can close his orange.fr email account and still retain his old emails? I’m guessing that if he closes the account but doesn’t remove it from Thunderbird, the account will retain the local folders but will be unable to connect to the orange.fr email address. I suppose that would be a solution but I’m guessing Thunderbird will throw a connection error every time it opens? is there a neater way? We would prefer to avoid trying to export them to another mail client.

Any suggestions / advice greatfully received. I’m just nervous that he doesn’t lose access to his old emails after closing his orange.fr email account. TIA Russ

In transferring my profile from PC to laptop, something went wrong and I lost all of my local folders, with years of emails in them. I have searched all parts of the Thunderbird folder under Roaming, and have been unable to find the folders.

The weird thing is that when I do a search for a particular subject or email that I know was in one of the local folders, the search still gives results showing the email headings. It will, however, not display the results as a list or open any of the emails.

The fact that the folders and emails appear in the search leads me to believe that they are still somewhere on my PC.

Does anyone have any advice on where they might be or how to find them?

I've been reading how to move my emails to a new computer. There are two users on the old computer, both with Thunderbird. When moving the email profile to the new computer, does it pick up both users, or does this need to be done separately for each individual Thunderbird email account? If so, I assume I need to set up both users on the new computer before starting the Thunderbird move. Also, how can I be absolutely sure I'm dealing with a recent enough email version on the old computer? My Thunderbird updates frequently but the new one seems to be slightly off.

Hi Guys,

How do I export all my emails from Thunderbird to my local HDD?

I know there are a few different methods but which is the best option for me?

I have 21GB of Emails on my Yahoo Mail and I want to download them to my local HDD. Check the attached screenshot.

What is the best option if I want to download everything?

When I have a complete backup of the entire thing I plan to delete them from my Yahoo Mail to clean up some space.

Thanks, Plamen

Hi there,

My email provider has just migrated my email address to a new server, which all went smoothly in the end. I thought that would be the hard part but it's actually Thunderbird that is giving me headaches.

I can send and receive mails fine but need to set up my Thunderbird folders again and copy in all my old emails. In other words, a new account has been set up for the same email address and I have kept the old account for the same email address until I have copied out everything I need from it.

But copying folders and mails doesn't always work and there seems to be absolutely no logic behind it - sometimes it works and something it doesn't.

Thunderbird won't let me copy my "Customers" folder with 30 subfolders in it so I have to do each of these manually. Again, some work, some don't.

Most of the time, an error message or three pops up because the old address wants me to enter my password again, which is no longer valid. And that usually scuppers any attempt to copy a folder manually.

I have unticked the three boxes under account settings so that it doesn't look for new mails every X minutes, when starting up, etc.

Is there any clever way I can avoid all this? Would it help if I did all this offline?

And does anyone know why the blasted folders are so difficult to copy?!!

Very grateful for any tips - thanks,

Ian

Hallo,

mein alter Rechner ist "gestorben", weshalb ich einen neuen brauchte. Vom alten Rechner hatte ich die drei Postfächer, mit denen ich "arbeite" gesichert und nun versucht, diese in der neuen thunderbird-Installation auf dem neuen Rechner einzuhängen, schrittweise, so wie in den FAQs zum Thema Import beschrieben.

Aber: Die alten Postfächer/Inhalte werden nicht angezeigt. Sie sind aber im Zielverzeichnis ".thunderbird" zu sehen und an der richtigen Stelle.

Ich bitte um Hilfestellung zur Problemlösung.

Danke im Voraus.

I'm trying to move some old folders to Local Folders. They are currently in subfolders of the account, not in inbox. I've right-clicked on the folder and then selected move to>local folders>folder name. They disappear from the imap spot but don't show up under local folders. Can anyone help?

How do I make a backup copy of my Thunderbird email client, saving all the subfolders? I would like to then uninstall Thunderbird and then reinstall it, as a new user, and without losing any of my old user folders. Thanks. After I do this, will I be able to reload all the old subfolders and read those messages?

I have used Thunderbird for years to access one mail account on AOL. In November, it suddenly quit working. In my efforts to fix it, I wound up with 2 sets of inboxes. How do I combine them now that I've downloaded & installed Thunderbird, which upgraded my program and reset the AOL connection? All mail is now going into a newer inbox, but I want it in the older inbox?

How do I restore emails from an email backup (that is NOT a backed-up profile zip file) that has been saved using ImportExportToolsNG? I used ImportExportTools NG to create an email backup. The backup is in the forms of files in a set of folders (calendar-data, crashes, datareporting, extensions etc.). It is not in the form of a zip file.

I used Eudora until they quite supporting it, and then in 9/2022 switched to Thunderbird. Long-time contributor Matt was very helpful in walking me though how to transition from Eudora to Thunderbird and then import the many Eudora folders and messages into T-bird under Local Folders. A few days ago I moved from my old Win10 computer to a new Win11 computer. Only the messages that were on the mail.earthlink.net server loaded into T-bird. I had been saving the more important new messages from T-bird to the Eudora folders (stupidly, as it turns out), but now they're not there. Is there a file on the old computer that I can save to flash drive and copy onto the new hard drive, to import the Eudora stuff? I seem to recall there was an mbox file...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Court Lewis

I have have had a Gmail address for a few years and have just created a new Gmail address, I am trying to copy about 20,000 emails from the original Gmail IMAP folders to local Thunderbird folders as a backup, and then copy them to the new Gmail address IMAP folders.

I have tried copying these in smaller amounts as suggested (between 200 and 500 at once) This seems to go well, however, when I have completed the task the original folder has a much higher amount of messages in it than the new one, so some messages are being lost along the way.

Is there a reliable method to do this, such as closing Thunderbird and then copying and pasting data held in the profile folder, or does it need to be done with Thunderbird running?

Many Thanks in advance

Having been using Thunderbird for over 25 years, I have some folders with very old mail which I am unlikely to ever want to access, but don't want to throw away. And, I am in a space crunch. Would it be reasonable to zip the contents of appropriate mail folders, store those elsewhere, then clear out the folder. Then, I could unzip to restore if needed.

Ideas?

How can I install Thunderbird on an external USB drive for my Mac, and, import an mbox to it (or a bunch of mboxes?) that also lives on that external drive? And keep this email account data disconnected from the original account it came from, that is, do NOT have it sync with Gmail? Perhaps it's best if I describe my situation and the result I'm trying to achieve.... (sorry for the length of this question; I'm trying to be precise and comprehensive at the same time 😬)

Situation: 1. Used macOS Mail for years, to manage a Gmail account 2. Recently used takeout.google.com to download the mbox for this account, which turned out to be 91.01GB (!) 3. I tried using macOS Mail on another computer to open it, and it's not happening; file seems too large; I get an error message saying the Mac's memory has been used up and Mail has stopped working 4. I'm currently waiting for a subsequent Google Takeout download that I expect will consist of many, many mbox files (each mbox corresponding to its own label, according to How to Download/Export Emails with Google Takeout) 5. I have limited space on my computer and would like to avoid accommodating 91.01+GB of historical email data

Desired result: 1. I'm basically trying to create a back-up of all my Gmail emails so that... 2. I can delete a bunch of them, reorganize them, etc. using my macOS Mail program, while being confident that... 3. I can always return to the easily accessible and searchable emails in Thunderbird

Add'l Thoughts/Specific questions: 1. Can I install and run the macOS version of Thunderbird on an external USB thumbdrive by simply dragging the TB app icon to the external drive to start the installation process? 2. Assuming TB has successfully been installed on the external drive, how do I make sure TB knows that the data from the mbox(es) I import should "live" on the external drive as well?

Thank you so much for reading and in advance for your advice.