Thunderbird Community Forum

I have saved relevant e mails to local folders in my Thunderbird account on my Applemac. I opened up Thunderbird on my MacBook and downloaded my Thunderbird account but it did not copy those local folders, merely 1 empty folder. Without these also shown in my Thunderbird account when I am away from home, I cannot see those records. I am struggling to find a solution. Are you able to help please? Alan Dowler

Hi,

I need some help! Thunderbird used to have archive settings in which I could choose to save my e-mails locally in my archive folders with 1 file per 1 email and not everything that's in a folder saved to a single file.

How can I get this back? Is there some hidden settings that can be accessed to get it done?

I need every email in one file! I'm going nuts trying to sort years of e-mail duplicates. If I can have a file per message, then I can at least use my PC duplicate file program to compare file content and find the similar ones. But with everything of one folder in the same archive file I'll be cursed to have to manually go through thousands of e-mails by hand! So if there is a way to return the previous archive format (*wdseml files??, it seems?) then I want to know how to set that setting.

Alternatively a local folder duplicate e-mail cleaning tool? There used to be some but I couldn't get it to work now!

I have removed the drive from the computer that will not boot up. I hope to be able to transfer my "profile" to my new computer from that drive. I understand that I will need to have the same version of Thunderbird installed on my new computer in order to transfer my "profile". Since I can't access Thunderbird on my "crashed" computer, how can I know what version I had installed previously? How do I find where to load that version on my new computer?

I will preface this with no I do not have a backup - which is my fault. However I did not expect my account to be nuked into oblivion with no explanation.

As per the title, all my emails are gone. My local folders are devoid of anything I can use and am hoping that everything may be on a server somewhere. This is years of emails, important correspondence, bank information, business, etc. The ONLY thing I can think of is when I download the TB app for android and sync'd it using the QR on the desktop version of thunderbird. I then checked stuff the next day and everything was gone barring emails from that day, all folders, everything was gone. Is there no way to recover this?

I just had a support session and the tech was unable to solve the problem. We tried installing a new version of Thunderbird and importing the messages over from the default install and it just freezes up. He tried replacing account settings with the account settings from a previous version and that didn't work either. He suggested contacting Mozilla to see if there was a way to import messages from the frozen default to my new profile.

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!!!

I recently migrated all my LSU.edu emails over to Thunderbird. Of the nearly 30,000 messages that moved over into the Thunderbird Inbox, only 7179 are accessible (blue button), while the remaining 28,012 are listed in a greyed out button.

Please help me access these 28,000 messages.

Thank you

Brett

I have an old(er) Thunderbird file - we were not able to get the system running so we just plugged in the hard drive and zipped it (not with Thunderbird, just zipped the raw files - see attached) and I have tried all three methods that Gemini spit out to me (#3 looks like what I have seen on the forums here) and the bext I can do is get the first message to pop up (out of about 500+) and can't see the others. Using Thunderbird on the new machine and also tried the ImportNG tool as well. I can't loose this collection, very important. Although the old machine does not work, I still have access to the hard drive if I need more "stuff" off of it. Not sure what the old version of Thunderbird was but the box was last used in Jan 2019 and setup originally around 2008. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

I have 5 email accounts stored in drive I: and 3 in drive C:, with multiple profiles (in I:(...)\Roaming\Thunderbird and \Local\Thunderbird AND the same in C:). (Windows 10). I need to move to a new PC (Windows 11), where drives are named C: and D:. I tried to use the Import/export function, but the accounts previously in I: don't appear (only the basic account shows, no inbox/sent, etc. and no data). I manually changed one of them to C: and then import again only the data. That was not possible for all the accounts and many emails (90%) are missing, also from the account were it "worked". I can find some emails in folders at the bottom of the account list, but many emails are yet missing, and received/sent not clearly defined. NB: on Windows 10 I have the latest esr version, on Windows 11 the latest NOT esr version.

So I tried to manually transfer the archives, but when copying from \Local\Thunderbird to an USB for the transfer, many files (more then 40k) went missing due to errors of copying.

What can I try?

I am moving my Thunderbird (32 bit) data from an old Win 7 computer to Linux Mint on a new machine with Thunderbird 64 bit. I have followed all the advice to copy the old computer profile to the profile folder in Mint, but nothing appears in Thunderbird. My pop3 email server has 2-factor authentication; I can set this up and access or send new emails, but I can't import all my old email folders. The old Thunderbird is version 115.18.0 (32 bit) and says it is "up to date on esr update channel" The Mint Thunderbird is 140.0.6 esr (64 bit) and was recently installed with Mint.

As these versions are 32 bit and 64 bit respectively, I don't see how I can make them the same version, as recommended for transferring profiles.

How can I make this work?

Want to migrate AOL large email file with 2000 emails to my hard drive which is not possible with AOL internal tools. Is this possible? I have a Firefox account and a Thunderbird email account now, just today. Used to have a FF account years ago. Normally use Edge on my Windows 11 HP laptop. Thank you.

From my local folder of emails in Thunderbird, I am able to extract to .CSV and see fields in Excel. While date and time and sender and receiver and subject fields work successfully I don't see the email body coming through. How do I achieve this please?

I managed to append switch values to get the Time field included as part of my extract but the email bogy, or even a truncated part of it eludes me. I understand that some of my email body fields are substantial but currently my repeated exports show nothing. Formats other than CSV would be welcome if they can solve my problem.

Hello, I apologize, I am uncertain if this is the appropriate place to post this topic. I am having significant difficulty with the forum system when we require assistance.

I have been using Thunderbird for over a year now, and I have wanted to stop using it since the first month of use. Several times a month, I am unable to send messages even though I haven't made any changes. The message keeps popping up: “The message failed to send. The message could not be sent because the connection to the outgoing server (SMTP) ”server name" failed. The server may be unavailable or refusing SMTP connections. Please check that your outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again."

This is supposed to be my work email. I understand that ThunderBird is a volunteer platform. And that you do what you can, but I can't afford to be stuck like this for a “yes” or a “no.” You were highly recommended to me by my website host, and I regret it. I am no longer in contact with that person, so I can no longer get the assistance I needed several times a month to get the mailbox up and running again. However, I continue to receive mail at that address.

Is there a way to automatically transfer emails from ThunderBird to Proton Mail? If so, how do I do that, please?

Thank you.

Hello everyone,

I am hoping someone can help me recover some EXTREMELY important emails for a legal matter. I was trying to export an entire nested Gmail label (WORK/TNC/TNC DISPUTE) to PDF.

It's a lot of emails spanning from April 2024 that I had painstakingly been going through and labeling to get them ready to print to use as evidence for a work dispute. When faced with the task of having to print all those emails to pdf, one by one, I wanted to chew my own arm off!

I'm convinced there must be another way to bulk print to pdf......and so I went down a few rabbit holes in search of my quick fix.....(I'm not trying to be lazy, I just have very little time left to get this done, and right now I'm losing the will to live if my reality is that I will be busy with this till the end of time.)

I read different threads and questions over the internet and found information that led me to Thunderbird. (Hi, Thunderbird :). I know there are paid apps or extensions that can bulk print to pdf, but I unfortunately don't have the money to pay for them (i.e. the work dispute - salary has been frozen for over 2 years and resignation was denied, so no income and held hostage by my employer - the emails I have lost are literally my future!). Sorry, enough of the why.....

I DID THIS:

So I read that I need to to create a folder in Thunderbird's "Local Folders" with the same name, and simply drag and drop the label from the original label to the local folder label (I did all of this in Thunderbird.

Unfortunately, this went VERY wrong. At first it seemed like it was doing something, but it didn't really do anything that I am aware of.....There was nothing in the local folder I had created and dragged the label to, there was nothing in the original label folder (everything was empty). I died! Then comforted myself with the fact that it's still in GMAIL.....that was the naive, optimistic me talking..... Headed over to Gmail, saw my label name, sigh of relief, clicked on the label name.....DIED 10000000000000 x over.......I continued to cry for the next 4 hours...

.That was the 12th of June.....I'm still trying to get them back.....I have been able to find a few bits of info here and there.....I just don't know how to get them back into Gmail for me to never try be so foolish again!!! (Until someone maybe shows me how to bulk print to PDF?????)....

Here is the current situation and the technical details of what I've found so far:

What happened:

Thunderbird executed a "Move" command instead of a "Copy".

The TNC DISPUTE label is in my Gmail web interface (the emails are not in the label, nor the the Trash and none of my settings anywhere are set to delete permanently etc., on exit).

The Local Folder in Thunderbird shows up on my screen, but it is completely empty.

What I have discovered in the background:

Account Type: IMAP connected to Gmail (*********@gmail.com). (i've replaced my email address name with stars to not put my private email on a public site)

The Local Files: I found the tracking path imap://**********%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/WORK/TNC/TNC DISPUTE. I also found the raw file directories containing TNC DISPUTE (no extension) and the TNC DISPUTE.msf index file.

The roadblock I am hitting:

I read that deleting the corrupted .msf index file while Thunderbird is closed will force it to rebuild the index and potentially reveal the emails. However, at first I couldn't safely get into the folder to do this:

When I clicked "Open Folder" from Help > More Troubleshooting Information, Windows threw an error: "Explorer.EXE - There was a problem sending the command to the program."

When I try to bypassed Thunderbird and use the Windows Run dialog with %appdata%\Thunderbird\Profiles, Windows threw another path error and refused to open it.

I ended up reinstalling Thunderbird and it fixed the access profile issue and I can now access where the data gets saved from Thunderbird.....

I just don't know what to do from here to get my (previously local foldered misshaped moved) folder back in my Gmail. (safely - to not corrupt everything or worse....delete it permanently.....)

The details of the missing emails (contents of the label that did copy to the local drive I think):

Directory Contents (as shown in the attached image)

1. TNC DISPUTE.sbd

• Type: File folder

• Date modified: 19 Jun 2026, 00:55

2. msgFilterRules.dat

• Type: DAT file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:49

• Size: 0 KB

3. TNC DISPUTE

• Type: File

• Date modified: 19 Jun 2026, 05:55

• Size: 670,605 KB

4. TNC DISPUTE.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 22:31

• Size: 3 KB

5. Trash

• Type: File

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:48

• Size: 0 KB

6. Trash.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 06:27

• Size: 2 KB

7. Unsent Messages

• Type: File

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:48

• Size: 0 KB

8. Unsent Messages.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 06:24

• Size: 2 KB

Sorry for the long post, hopefully someone can help me go back in time and have my only issue be searching for ways to bulk print to pdf and not having to try restore the only emails that are actually worth being on there.

TIA xxx Margz

Hello everyone,

I am using Thunderbird with a work email account that is based on Gmail (IMAP).

My question is: How can I make sure that I will still have access to my emails in Thunderbird if my company deletes the Gmail account in the future?

Specifically: 1. Which Thunderbird settings ensure that emails are fully stored locally? 2. Is “offline use” of folders sufficient, or are there additional steps I should take? 3. Are there any caveats with Gmail/IMAP I should be aware of?

Thanks a lot for your help!

The newest version of Thunderbird wiped out the stored files from the previous version by making me create a new identity. I have tried several times to use "import" to retrieve backed up data from the old version, but without success, even after I re-installed an earlier version of Thunderbird. Each time I use the "import" feature I get a message that it failed unexpectedly. I need these old e-mails because they contain receipts for charitable donations that I need because my tax returns are being audited. What can I do?

bold textI recently had my computer get stuck in the "automatic repair" loop making it impossible to boot up. I restored a several months old back up onto a different hard drive. I can boot on the new hard drive, but Thunderbird is missing several months of e-mails. I have tried importing from the old hard disk, but IT DOES NOT WORK. Alll it does is create a new "Local Folders" with nothing in it. I have tried exporting the old profile to a zip file, but it is 14 GB, more than Thunderbird can handle. How can I import the old e-mails into the working version of Thunderbird on the new hard drive. Please, do not say "use the import function" as i have already found it does not work.

Hello, I have three profiles, and then a large number of sub folders in Local Folders. I would like to know how to transfer these Local Folders to Outlook. the profiles and their emails have all been transferred successfully.