Thunderbird Community Forum

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 am losing my Mediacom ISP account (which I have had for 20 years) at the end of this month. I have used Mediacoms web mail server all this time and want to keep many emails and addresses that are on their server. I was told that Thunderbird would allow me to transfer/copy these messages to my computer and retain them there in Thunderbird after I no longer have access to Mediacoms server. I have installed Thunderbird 3 times and spent 2-3 days with help from this forum trying to gt it to work properly but have not succeeded. I have a windows 10 HP laptop and am not completely computer literate so I don't believe I will solve this by myself. I even loaded up an old windows 7 computer which I did with ver 15. but that didn't work either. THe one difference I did notice is that the Tbird auto installation on my Win 10 machine selects POP and on the Win 7 machine it selects IMAP. Mediacom is uses IMAP

Thunderbird has managed to keep all the message headers however the body of EVERY email is now empty. I had archives of email going back to the 80's and it's all gone. I tried to import backups again but TB throws away the body of the messages.

Note that there are many different email address formats in use from regular TCP/IP, XNS, UUCP, Mainframe 8.8, and others. The headers are there and show the addresses but the content is totally empty for every message.

Before TB gets a hold of them, I can read them so I know the data is there and it is TB that is removing it.

Please help

Good morning . . . I have recently switched from an old Windows 10 machine to a new macmini, and have switched my Office 365 account over to it. Simply stated, Outlook is not working, and I have no desire to continue with it. Will Thunderbird suit my needs? Will it allow me to import my old contacts and emails, both from my Windows machine and the new MacOutlook?

I have a new w11 laptop. I would like to install Thunderbird. I have 8 email accounts on the old W10 computer. I plan on keeping the old W10 computer running and using TB. All my accounts are IMAP--Yahoo, gmail, hotmail (now outlook) but I have an pretty extensive Local folder collection on the old W10 Would I be better off just installing TB on the new W11 computer and adding each email and start fresh or should I venture into copying the W10 profile (some of the instructions seem a bit confusing). If I add all my emails as a fresh start to the new W11 computer could I then just copy the LOCAL folders in the W10 Profile and paste it into the W11 profile?

I'm changing email servers and need the best way to automatically backup my complete(multiple domains and user accounts) emails in thunderbird to a separate drive or local machine before changing servers. I would prefer an automated way to do this so I can continue to update backup file routinely

I already back up my profile regularly to a remote drive

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

I tried to use Thunderbird today,.. to find the interface was broken, menus were blank, so no ability to look at anything., and error message inferring there was a menu config issue was all that was shown. I duly removed Thunderbird as a snap install, which took a long time as it seemed to be making a backup to somewhere. I then reinstalled Thunderbird 128.11.0esr (64-bit) on my ubuntu 24.04,.. having setup the isp email credentials,.. all seemed fine,.. I then proceeded to import what I assumed was my old local folders... And this is where things went wrong, as I seem to have lost all my archived 2025 emails,.. I say somewhere,.. as I don't seem to be able to find them, I have used the 'find' command to locate anything with 2025 in the file name,.. but without success. At the moment I have a multi-structured 'local folder' entry, but nothing with 2025 in? I anyone able to shed some light on what I may have done wrong Many tx

I am not sure if this is the correct place to ask my question. Apologies if you think it should be somewhere else in Thunderbird Help.

My old W10 machine crashed in September. I bought a W11 machine in October.

A colleague managed to rescue all my data from the W10 to a HDD.

I installed Thunderbird 143.0.1 to the W11 machine. On running the program it found me and my emails. I hoped it would find my wife's emails too. But no luck so far. Both domain names are the same. I've tried adding the details I have for my wife's email as a new account, but the program goes on and on looking with no result, and no end. I have to unplug the power cord to end it.

I've followed advice from the help pages to Find and restore my Profile without opening Thunderbird. In the process I've deleted the Profile on the W11 install, and substituted the Profile from the W10 install. It was around 8GB. So I assumed that Local Folders and my wife's details would show. Neither of these things occur. My account is shown together with recent emails.

What is happening? How can I get my wife's email account to show? How can I find my archive of emails in Local Folders? Any help gratefully accepted. Thunderbird 101 maybe?

My wife has a computer that hasn't been used for about 7 years and it contains a lot of emails that she would like to have on her newer computer.

The older computer has an older version of Thunderbird which doesn't allow the Importexport ng extension to be added.

Although I've copied her old profile, I can't see how to extract the emails from it into the newer version of Thunderbird on the newer computer. Is it possible and if so, how please.

Thanks.

Hi everyone - and big thanks in advance for considering my request: I have/ had windows 11 on my old machine and windows 11 on my new machine; because my 'old computer' is not running anymore at all (liquid damage), I can no longer start Thunderbird and follow the 'export tool function' (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export) and thus can only do the manual transfer (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer); I didn't think that I would need to go through the export tool steps when I saved the Thunderbird profile folder regularly as backup on the cloud; yet when I started Thunderbird on my new machine following the above steps by moving the Thunderbird profile folder manually, the result is that - although Thunderbird is 'running' and the mailbox is functioning properly - the key folders are empty (i.e. the sub-folder structure is completely lost, in fact there are no individual emails at all); the issue seems to be that the size of the Thunderbird profile folder is too large (the "Profiles" folder has a size of 20.5 GB) for doing this transfer via copy & paste of the Thunderbird profile folder from the cloud (I also tried USB) to the new machine; I understand that the size issue via the manual transfer could be 'overcome' just by starting Thunderbird on the 'old machine' and following the above steps explained under mozilla support; yet that's no longer an option; what could I do please?

I'm trying to setup Thunderbird for my Google Workplace account. 1. In the default settings, I receive the error message 'Profile not found' when I try and add my Outlook .PST file 2. I can't see how to access Profile Manager so I've started Thunderbird from the command line, activating the Profile manager, i.e. Thunderbird -p. When I add a profile and try and access my Google gmail I receive an error that the configuration server could not be found. Note point 1 where the same account was setup correctly but in the default 'no profile'.

Hello helpful community, Yesterday after first updating my mac ios, I updated Thunderbird (as directed) on my macbook pro and discovered that my local folders are gone. I now have version 128.7.0esr. I have read other conversations here about this problem but they are WAY over my head, and seem to do with PCs. Can you help me restore my local folders with instructions I can hopefully understand? Thank you!

Hello, Sometime ago something happened on my server and caused the email account to get corrupted. I cannot access any of the emails. Prior to this, a backup was made of the account. The backup was made because the server was being changed. All emails worked perfectly after the server change and worked for months. The account is set up as IMAP. The size roughly of the backup is 1.2 GB. The backup file does NOT have the proper extension for recovering the emails. The extension is simply .file

When the email got corrupted it simply dissapeared from the server. I think the server is running Linux / Apache.

Any suggestions? Thanks

Back when W110 went to w11 I got a new computer and was given great directions here to back up my TB profile by searching %appdata% and copy the thunderbird folder to external source. That file is 198 MB. I do this every month now ..It is my understanding it saves my profile and all emails including local ones. Now in Aug 2026 when i copy this file, I am getting an error a file is too long and have no choice but to skip that file..I will attach a pic of the error. Is this back up ok to use or is it corrupt because of the error?

I also found in TB help there is an export feature in TB to a zip file but that .zip is huge..I did one just in case. I think you just open TB>select hamburger menu three lines on top right>tools>export. I did that back up/export also today and that is a .zip file folder that is less properties like 175 MB.

So now which way is the correct way to keep a safe copy of my TB in case my computer crashes or i have to put on another pc?

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

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

I recently lost all my Stored messages (don't know what I did). I have tried restoring everything from my backup device with no success. My backup data is as follows:- Chris's email 3.2.25 (version 128.6.1est (64 bit) Thunderbird Profiles jb1w6eta-esr imapMail imap.virginmedia.com

My stored folders are there.

I have tried importing using Thunderbird Tools Import From a Thunderbird Installation Choose a Profile folder I have then entered various levels of above backup They all say complete without actually transferring any data.

The current level of Thunderbird I have installed is 128.7.1esr.. Since this is different from the backup could that have an effect or am I missing a step in the import procedure?

Thanks for any help

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 have a large amount of email stored on an IMAP server. Would like to reduce that by moving most or all of it to a local disk drive. Am looking for a (hopefully simple) guide to doing the transfer. I don't see a Local Folders entry in the left-hand pane; not sure if that matters. (Presently running TB 115.10.1 64-bit on Windows 10 and 11.)

I upgraded from windows 10 to 11 My son was able to recover my e-mail folders, but some large folders are missing and the remainder only have e-mails from 2019 or earlier. How do I recover those e-mails? I am no longer conversant with the current technology or terminology. I need simplistic instructions.