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?

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 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.

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 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

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 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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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 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!