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To be clear, I seriously doubt the problems I am encountering are TB's fault! The problems may be my fault since I've grown older, I've tended (believed) using new versions of software present my mind a BIGGER challenge than using the older software/version I have been successfully using? I'm still using Version115.10.1

After our ISP chose to start using Zimbra Oct. 7, 2025 and their tech support could not assist me in getting TB working the had me remove POP3 settings for TB and change to IMAP with their software.

FINALLY someone helped me get TB working with IMAP. For 3 days grrr. Now the ISP says I need to use their web mail, Zimbra.

So might downloading the current TB version and somehow get the In box, all the folder contnets etc. over - into the new TB help?

I was going to backup everything tonight, now I have little to NO hope, without help!

THANKS & remain WELL plus be SAFE!

Robin

Hi, I've set up TB successfully on a new PC and been using it a while. Then I noticed my local folders archive group of subfolders was missing. I followed some instructions about moving local folders file across from the old to the new version.

Now I see the individual archive folders without the folder group name 'archive'.

Also, there are a couple of other files not visible on the new platform although they were in the original installation local files and were copied across.

I was careful to ensure the same version running on both PCs. Also that TB was closed when copying files across.

Any pointers appreciated!

Tuesday Oct. 7, our ISP converted to a new e-mail program. I could NOT log in/on I called our ISP's help desk. The 'technician' could not help me log in to our Thunderbird POP 3 account. He had me, WITHOUT asking if I had essential - legal - medical-etc. e-mails in the IN BOX or in folders! He NEVER warned/cautioned all ?would? be lost - GONE.

I URGENTLY need to recover all TB POP3 IN BOX & e-mails in folders. I need to access legal messages today, if possible.

If Mozilla does not have a recovery program, what do I do? I am not seeking to recover ' deleted messages (unless his having me change from the POP3 account to a 'new' IMAP account is the same as ' "delete" '.

Any & all prompt responses APPRECIATED! Remain WELL & Be SAFE!

Robin

Hi, Forums - I am a new Thunderbird user based on on-line research suggesting Thunderbird as the best way to relieve gmail account with local mailbox archiving. My gmail is out of storage by end of the month and my plan was to move a bunch of old messages into local Thunderbird mailbox to clear room in the google account. I have set up Thunderbird successfully with gmail using IMAP connectivity option. Thunderbird shows same folder structure as labels in gmail and displays all messages from the oldest to newest. So then I tried the "archiving" by setting up a folder structure under Thunderbird's Local Folders. Specifically, to start with I I set up Inbox_archive and Sent_archive and used right click Move To > Local Folders > Folder name to move old messages from live ...@gmail.com tree to Local Folder tree. Since there is also an option Copy To, my understanding was that Move should be different from Copy by also removing messages from gmail and move them to Local folders. At a first glance these steps seemed to work. I see unique old messages in Thuderbird Local Folders. I don't see these messages in Thunderbird's gmail inbox/sent and I also don't see these messages when I search in on-line gmail in:inbox and in:sent. I noticed, however, that google storage size didn't budge. I moved a thousand of more messages in the same way (thinking maybe older messages were just small) and the storage still didn't decrease. I then looked around in on-line gmail and found the messages that I presumed "archived" still sitting in gmail's All Mail. This explains why the storage size didn't change. I searched on the forum and on-line and can't get a confident answer on what am I missing to actually remove the messages from gmail - ideally in the most straightforward manner in one action as a cut and paste from on-line to local folders. Are there any IMAP/account settings that I should have so that Thunderbird's "Move to" actually removes messages from on-line account? Or is there a different archiving command/strategy I need to use?

I am hesitant to do any more trial and error on my own since I already messed up my gmail by having now thousands of messages still sitting in All Mail without proper Inbox and Sent tags and, thus, would appreciate the recommendation from someone who is familiar with my use case.

Thank you.

I have an existing Tbird account for my Gmail emails. Have set up a new Tbird account for my Outlook email account. Would like to move all emails, including folders and subfolders, to my new Outlook Tbird account (with the intent of closing my Gmail account altogether).

Would appreciate learning the steps to ensure the emails, folders, and subfolders are moved from Tbird Gmail account to Tbird Outlook account

Tried exporting profile folder again today. Somehow it was different. When I clicked on exporting it opened the profile folder and there were 2 profiles in there, one from 9-8 and one from 2023. I don’t remember seeing this before.

I clicked on the newer file and told it to export. It started, ran up to 50%, then stopped.

In the upper left corner on my screen, it said “Thunderbird not responding”. I don’t know why. It offered me an option to wait for Tbird to respond, or cancel the action. I opted to cancel even tho it said I might lose data.

When I did it asked me to put in the last dixc of the multi volume set. I have no idea. I’m out of the program now. None of this happened with the 2 exports I did before. And when I cleared the flash drive of yesterday's file, it had ) bytes of data on it. What do I do now? I have a lot of Tbird already set up, just need mailboxes and addresses, I think. Is there a workaround? Can I copy those items from the old desk top and paste them into the new lap top program? Thanks for your suggestions. Stacy

Hi! I am trying to use the Thunderbird application to help me view a huge '.mbox' file from an email account that is no longer active. I have the entire file saved to my computer as I downloaded it before the account was closed. Can you help me access those files? I am working on a huge project and really need to look for date sand times of emails sent in the mailbox so that i can piece together the timeline of the project. I would greatly appreciate this!!!

Hello all:

Transferring Thunderbird from the system above to the system noted above. Follow the instructions from here on the Mozilla Support page (copied both "Thunderbird" directories into the Roaming and Local destination directories. When the destination machine installation opens, it is functional (i.e. it picks up all the existing e-mail accounts, downloads new mail, etc...). The problem starts when we get to the local folders.

All of these have a date and time appended to them in the destination installation. For example, if the original folder is "Prosperity Bank" the destination folder is labeled "Prosperity Bank (2025_09_21 23_06_33 UTC)" and will not let not populate (shows no messages inside).

As I am typing this, it seems I may have identified the problem (or at least part of it). It seems the destination system install is slowly working its way through the local folders randomly (not in alphabetically order), as it seems to be slowly populating them with the old mail stored therein on the original system. It is going very slowly. Very slowly.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it normal? Is there any way to quickly eliminate the dates now appended to the local file names? (Visually this is very annoying and I do not want to try modifying the individual folder names yet until I'm sure its populated as much as it will populate.)

Thank you for any assistance.

Larry Reese

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.

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?

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

After backing up a specific email account, and then checking the backup under local folders I only have those backup files under local folders. All of my subfolders in local folders are gone. How do I restore the original local folders? Thanks, Matt

Hello, Some 12-14 years ago my US based website manager signed me up with Thunderbird since he was having issues getting my Outlook to be compatible with his server. It had been relatively trouble free until recently.

When a recent update occured it appeared that Thunderbird had vaporized my e-mails from 2023/24. I had/have numerous e-mails related to a lawsuit that is tremendously important to me. I read on Mozilla's site about a program alled Recoverit from Wondershare. It did not appear to work at all. Not too long after my Lenovo PC died. The techa at Memory Express could only see a single program on my hard drive when I took the hard drive to them for analysis. I subsequently sent the drive to Secure Data

and they are sending it back to me.

In the meantime my replacement computer is an HP laptop. I purchased Windows 365 since they provided a technician to assist with setup. The tech could not get Thunderbird to work nor could they make Outlook work, MS blamed the server. The server guy says ir works, I have been without my e-mail for more than 6 weeks.

Can anyone help?

Hello,

I have a problem with copying emails (a large number of them) from a POP3 account to an IMAP account. I have created both accounts in Thunderbird, but when I select the messages to be copied, a message appears for about a second saying that copying is starting, and then it disappears and no process is started. Sometimes I can copy a small number, for example 100 messages, and other times I can't copy anything. The problem is definitely not with the IMAP server limits.

Please help me find out where the problem might be.

Hi All,

Here are my details: We used Google Vault to export a select number of emails as .mbox files. They were zipped after the download from Google Vault, and I have since extracted the contents. I can see the contents of the emails in Notepad++, but when I try to upload them to Thunderbird via the Account Settings, the newly created folder is empty (this is after a restart).

I've tried using the ImportExportTools NG extension to see if I get different results, but each time the folders are empty.

Anything else I should try? OS: Win10 22H2 19045.6332

Hello! I have a bit of a long story but hopefully this won't take too much of your time. I have a windows 11 pc that came with a realtively small ssd. I installed thunderbird and used it for many months. then i cloned this ssd to a new higher capacity ssd and installed the new ssd into my pc. i continued with thunderbird and my new ssd for roughtly 3 months but i found that the new ssd was glitching and was giving me problems.

about two weeks ago i removed the cloned high-capacity ssd which had the three months of new emails and i reinstalled the old original ssd into my pc and have continued with thunderbird. i also installed the glitchy high-capacity ssd into a docking station and i have it connected to my pc as an external drive. So my problem is that while my pc has all my original thunderbird emails, it is missing the three months of emails that are on the cloned high-capacity ssd. And to further complicate things, i have been using my reinstalled old ssd for two weeks and have accumulated new thunderbird emails.

how can i copy or import the three months of thunderbird emails that are on my high capacity ssd that is attached to the computer now as an external drive. Remember that not only does that high capacity drive have three months of emails that I need, it also has all my original thunderbird emails that it obtained through the cloning process. so my concern is that whatever import process i might do, it is either going to cause a lot of duplication of the old emails or it is going to wipe out or disturb the most recent activity (my last two weeks) when one profile is replaced entire replaces another.

MY QUESTION: is there a way to selectively import just the last three months of my thunderbird emails from the high capacity ssd that is connected currently as an external drive? I know the specfic date range that i am looking for.

thanks eric