Thunderbird Community Forum

I am transferring thunderbird to a new computer. I copied the Thunderbird profile from the old computer to the new computer but most of the old messages are not showing up. I uninstalled thunderbird from the new computer and reinstalled it and again copied the old profile but still the old messages are not there. How can I get them on the new computer?

Migrating from a Win 10 laptop to a Win 11 laptop. Need to move the local folders as well but they were assigned a different ID and I can't change the target address in the new installation. Thanks in advance for your help. Rick.

I use POP. I download and keep all my messages received and sent, and have the server delete after a set period. However after installing Thunderbird I've noticed my sent folder is only 6 months old. It should be 15 years! What has Thunderbird done with my messages and can I get them back?

I changed POP3 email password to an app password and Thunderbird would not recognize it even though I updated in Security. I was told to delete the Thunderbird account then set it back up which I did--I did not check the box to delete files. Finally the new account was able to bring in new emails (POP3) but the old folders/emails are not there.

I read that I should go to %appdata%, roaming, Thunderbird but the dates are from years ago--do I go further to find my data or is there another path or something else I should do?

Unless they were backed up somewhere within Thunderbird, I don't think I have any backup.

Can you please help? Thank you.

Thunderbird Mail Accounts Not Imported from 5 GB Backup

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to restore my Thunderbird setup from a 5 GB backup/export file.

Thunderbird already recommended that I manually extract the backup file and then import the extracted folder. I followed these instructions, but after importing the folder, none of my mail accounts are restored.

The backup file is about 5 GB in size, so I assume the data is there, but Thunderbird does not recognize or restore the email accounts.

Has anyone experienced this issue? How can I properly restore the mail accounts and their emails from this backup?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Greetings,

I perform a daily thumb drive backup of Thunderbird in the event that my PC crashes (which it has) so I don't loose emails and contacts. I'm aware of two methods to do this. I've tried both, and one method saves more file folders than the other. My question is: Which is correct to use?

One method is described here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export The other method is accessed from the main page of Thunderbird: Import/Export > Backup, select OK and then the location and folder where you want the data to be transferred.

The first method captures four main folders and other files listed below them. The second method captures ten folders and all of the same files as in the first method.

Because they are different, I'm unsure of which to use and, additionally, why would two methods be offered?

Thank you in advance for your comments and advice.

I'm moving from Windows to Mac. I exported my Profile from the Windows setup to a ZIP. The import to the Mac seemed to go smoothly but the result is I got all my custom headings I'd nested under Inbox (etc.) but none of the contents. The ZIP is well over 1 gig in size so clearly the export caught all but none of the contents imported. '

For example, under Inbox I created a Heading named Receipts that was populated by receipts from purchases. The import added that heading but none of the emails under that Heading.

I tried simply copying the Profile file from the Windows profile folder to the Mac profile folder but that clearly did not work.

I'm on the edge of desperation here. I'd greatly appreciate any and all help.

I am moving the host of my email domain to a different provider and I want to protect my historical emails. I have set up the emails as POP3 so I should have all the emails on my PC, but in the past when I transferred my business email to a new host I didn't back up the database. So, when I put the new email host settings into outlook, it over-wrote the database and all my historical emails were wiped, and it turned out that my back up and archive pst files were both corrupted so couldn't restore them ( I have since managed to retrieve everything but it was a long process I don't want to go through again if I can help it). So I'd like to know where the database is stored so I can duplicate it first. Any help would be appreciated.

Hello people, I've just upgraded my Thinderbird because my inbox didn't load on opening the programme. I guess I have made a huge mistake somewhere in the process, because my whole archive has disappeared. I very much hope it still exists somewhere and that I will be able to restore it with your help. Thanking you in advance, Nele Ysebaert, Amsterdam

I am trying to migrate from Microsoft Outlook 2021 to Mozilla Thunderbird. I have successfully imported the email from a number of different email accounts. I would now like to import the archived emails held in a number of PST files. The import tool would seem to be what is required, but it does not seem to allow me to select the PST files that I wish to import. I am concerned that it will try to import all email messages from my Outlook 2021. Is there a way of restricting it to just individual PST files?

I have recently downloaded Thunderbird Mail, and the installation went smoothly, however, only half of the folders from Apple Mail have been imported. I have tried repeating the import, but without success. What could be the reason for this, and how do I transfer the rest of the folders? I have also tried saving the missing folders as mbox files, and then transferring - but without success.

I have what should be a pretty simple question. 1. I deleted my Tbird POP acct because it stopped working. 2. I reinstalled it. 3. My saved mail folders were gone. 4. Is it possible to get them back? 5. * This question is for someone other than David. 6. I just want to get my old saved folders back into my reinstalled account. 7. It's been about five days since this all took place. 8.The version I deleted was a the previous release.

TB will import but does not display either legible emails nor attachments. I suspect GM at is fault. The takeouts seem incomplete at Zip 11GB. There are 2407 emails in my simple GM account a few with always Adobe PDF legal document attachments. I am new to Thunderbird so that may be a contributor but it looks very straight forward. Perhaps I am a moronic 82? I represent 11,000 disabled Firefighters pro bono in UK and Ireland. Grateful for any help please...Paul

Is it possible to import to, or display email messages, in Thunderbird, which are stored in a Becky Internet Mail program folder (https://www.rimarts.co.jp/becky.htm), please?

Thanks

I was attempting to use Thunderbird Restore Tool to merge multiple Thunderbird profiles. Before I started, I copied the existing Thunderbird profile to a safe location where it has remained undisturbed. The Thunderbird Restore Tool did not produce the desired results, but that is a story for another day. I tried copying the saved profile back to C:\User\Tom Hayden\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles. I then started Thunderbird. It returned something very close to "Your profile file is inaccessible or corrupted". After some research, I edited the profiles.ini to point to the old profile file. Thunderbird would not start. I tried multiple iterations of thunderbird - p to run the profile manager. I was, eventually, able to get thunderbird to start and read the most recent e-mails from the server. However, it would not load any of the old e-mails from the old profile. I went to the profile thunderbird is currently using. Under ...\thunderbird\profile\pd785tbj.Default_User\Mail I found Local Folders-1 and pop3.airmail.net. Under pop3.airmail.net I can see the directory structure I used for my old e-mail. Everything appears to be present and in place. No matter what I do, Thunderbird will not read/load those e-mails. There is also an ImapMail directory with mail.airmail.net. Under it is a directory structure that appears to be what is actually showing up in Thunderbird. How do I restore/reload/recover/whatever the old e-mails in pop3.airmail.net? Please make your answer as explicit as possible.

My ISP changed us to another mail provider. So I created a new version of my existing email with different server settings, then restored my email backup. I did this all offline and it was successful. All my emails and folders were there.

Next, I went online to download new email, after which all of the messages and folders from the backup were removed (overwritten). I've tried repeating the process by removing the new account and reinstalling it, but I can't get my old emails and folders back. This is a significant problem because I have over a decade of financial and legal emails in the backup. I have tried a number of the solutions posted in the Community but have not been successful in getting my emails back. I'm using Windows 10 and Thunderbird 115.10.1.

Any insights are most appreciated.

So, I recently got rid of Spectrum as my internet & email provider. I have used the Archive function to archive all the emails from that account but still need to be able to access them after I remove the spectrum email account from Thunderbird. Does Archiving the emails keep them accessible or do I need to so something else. Further info, all of my emails are downloaded to thunderbird and not kept on the server, so they are physically on my computer inside thunderbird program

Hi. Please could you guide me through moving my email messages from a POP3 account on one Mac to another? I have an old iMac (late 2015, Monterey) that I am tearing down for parts, but this has been my main Thunderbird computer. It is running the latest version of Thunderbird (153.0.2), as I updated it to do the Export. I am trying to move my email accounts onto my M1 Macbook Pro. When I first installed Thunderbird on the Macbook I was delighted to see that my data and settings for the IMAP accounts had somehow miraculously (to me!) migrated. But I have a POP3 account which has only partially moved across. It seems to be receiving new emails, but all the Inbox history is missing, and other folders such as Drafts and Sent are not there either, I just have Inbox, Spam and Deleted. I have tried your Export/Import method twice, but to no avail. In the expanded profile on my USB stick I can see Mail>mail.oddplanetstudios.co.uk which looks like it might contain all the files and messages. Now I want to move them across into Thunderbird, but I don't know what the steps are to do this. I would be very grateful if you could lead me through this, if it is indeed what I need to do, or give me some directions to do it differently. Many thanks.

Old PC died and will not start up. I bought a new PC and was able to recover most file in the initiating the new desktop. I installed Mozilla Thunderbird on the new PC, but when I opened it only 55 EMAILS were available with the oldest being about 2 weeks old dating back to July 16, 2026. Is there a time limit for maintaining EMAILS online? Also, all of my contacts and Calendar events are not available.

I had created several folders to save important EMAILS and none of those sub-folders are visible to me. How do I get to those folders and EMAILS? Contacts and calendar are not as important, but they were used all of the time to communicate and stay on schedule

I tried to import using the tool provided, but received the following message: Import failed unexpectedly, more information may be available in the error console.

I have lots of important information that I can't access!

Help