Thunderbird Support Forum

Upgraded from v.60.9.1 to 68.12.1 finally. Everything works, except nothing happens when selecting any of the dropdown menu items under the "Thunderbird" entry at the top left. This is the one that offers "About Thunderbird", "Preferences", "Quit Thunderbird". (see image) None of these work - all the other dropdown elements under "File", "Edit" etc. work fine. Had to close the program by the keyboard shortcut, but could not see the Preferences at all. Is this a known issue? Mac OS 10.10.5, which I know is old, but v68 is supposed to be compatible. Restarted computer but no difference. Went back to v60.9.1 and the former profile and that works as before. Advice?? Thanks.

I am trying to move my Thunderbird from an old Dell computer(2012; running Windows 10) to a new Dell computer(2020; running Windows 10) using the procedures described at this link, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer, but ultimately fails. After I complete all the steps, I open Thunderbird (Work Offline mode) on the new PC and I can see all my accounts with all the emails correctly. I then close Thunderbird and then reopen it again (Work Offline mode) and now all my emails are gone. But the accounts still show. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Notes: I have at least 12 different email accounts with about 40GB of data. Both computers have access to each other via my router's LAN. I first copy the 40GB of Thunderbird data from the old PC to a temporary directory on the new PC. I then follow the steps in replacing the appropriate Thunderbird directories on the new PC as the instructions indicate. Do the path directories on both computers have to be identical up from the 'Roaming' directory?

Hi, Thanks to those who may reply.

I'm a french user with basic skills. I'm using Thunderbird with an email adress #1. I have to move to an email adress #2 for work. I might or might not continue to use email adress #1 but my main adress will be 2.
I've organised my folders the way needed by my professionnal activities. 
I'd like to keep this organisation/architecture to continue classify my emails as I did.
Is there a way to do that ? In other words, I'd like to use a new email adress but keep everything else in Thunderbird as it was.
Thanks for your help.

I want to use TB on a different PC (W10 home latest version) and copied the profile files from a laptop running 78.6.1, installed 78.6.1 on to the PC and pasted the profile files into the new profile folder. TB was shut down during all copy/paste operations. Installation went ok, restarted PC afterwards just in case and the first time it ran everything showed ok, ie all transferred emails. However, after restarting the PC, TB will only run in TB safe mode and display properly.

Starting TB normally now shows one of the two screenshots below. Anyone help me with this please?

I recently installed the latest Slackware on a new computer. In order to migrate my thunderbird account from the old computer to the new one, I copied my the files under .thunderbird: profile gfwo444i.default, installs.ini, and profiles.ini into the .thunderbird directory on my new computer. However, when I started thunderbird, it did not show any of my local emails nor my address book. I also tried starting the thunderbird profilemanager to pick my profile. This also had no effect. What am I doing wrong?

I migrated from a Win7 computer to a Win10 computer following this guide: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer

The first time starting on the new computer works without problems, I can send and recieve mails as well as see my old mails. After closing Thunderbird the next start is not working right. I don't get asked for my Password, and all Windows are empty (see attached images).

Seems to be more than just a visual bug, because when Thunderbird recieves new mails, they are supposed to be deleted on the server, which they are not.

After the first run of Thunderbird on my new computer was succesful I deleted the profile on my old computer, using the copy of my profile, I was able to succesfully restore it there, without any problems starting it multiple times.

Have tried importing the profile multiple times, even tried to generate a new backup from my old computer and importing it again. The first start after overwriting the Thunderbird folder works without a flaw I noticed, then I close Thunderbird, and the second start is failing.

Does anyone have ideas, how to track down my problem?

I updated my OS and copied the profile I had saved before in the new profile. Among other entries the new profile contains a link

lock -> 127.0.0.1:+1589

What does this mean? Should I get rid of it and how?

I have updated my OS from openSuse Leap 15.0 to Leap 15.2. My email settings could easily be restored and TB 78.6.0 is working. I had saved the .thunderbird directory and now want to import the addressbook from this saved directory. I find abook.sqlite and abook.mab.bak. How can I import this data into the new TB?

I have the same question about local folders. But I will ask that in a separate thread.

I've tried several programs and methods to migrate my emails and folder structure from Windows Live Mail to Thunderbird. Because of the way WLM stores the folders and emails differently than they appear in the WLM program, the migration mangles the folders and email file names when imported/migrated to Thunderbird. The emails are spread over multiple folders, the names are not transferred completely, etc

QUESTION -- has anyone figured out how to migrate from WLM to Thunderbird and PRESERVE the folder structure and email subject names?

Are there any transfer programs that handle this correctly? I've tried MailtoX and MailExplorer

Thanks....Al

I have been using the way old Thunderbird 1.0.6 on a few different PC over the years - no problem until now, when i migrate my Windows-10 to new hardware. The program is simple and stupid and has no smart features to like HTML and graphics in recieved Email, and i love it for its lack of "features", compared to other mailers i have been using through my work.

I have never had any problems with it util now when Windows claims an administrator has blocked this old installpackage from running. I managed to copy the program-folder and the maildatabase with account setup and so on, from the old computer to the new computer and have it running - but it is not recognized by Windows 10. Windows is the version from 2. half of 2020

Will it be possible to run the installpackage anyway? ( i mean overvome the rejection by Microsoft)

Or should i try to add it to the registry-database by hand?

And if impossible to set up on the new Windows-10, will it be possible to move/migrate the email-database to a newer version (most resent version) of Thunderbird? - Maybe by doing it in incrementall steps from one version to another. There are Emails in the mailfolders from 2004 and until now that i dearly want to keep.

Kind Regards Lars

Due to a System Crash at the end of October, I had to reinstall TBird 68.3 on Windows 10 (64 Bits). Since Nothing could be fixed, I upgraded TBird to V.84.0b3(64 Bits), hoping it would work better...

All my email Folders and their content reloaded themselves without any problem. However, my Contacts Folder remains empty and I have also been unable to find the correct Filters to receive any emails that have been sent to me since this Crash!

I am now desperate for help, so please don't hesitate to email me to "carl.bongaerts254@gmail.com" and please send a CC to my TBird email "info@tissim.com", just in case I find a solution in the near future!!! Thank you very, very much! Carl

I *very* reluctantly switched to the latest version of Thunderbird (78.1.0) and lost the functionality of Colored Folders, which was vital to me (the color outline is virtually useless), along with the ability to know how many messages were in each folder. Has that capability *really* been removed? Why? And why is each new version worse than before? Every iteration removes something I need & adds nothing I want. As a software developer myself, I really don't get that.

I sort my email according to when I need to do something, and without knowing whether there are tasks in each folder, I have to keep checking to see if I've finished everything. This version is really a disappointment, and I'll have to go back to the awful GMail interface until it gets fixed.

Hi moz://a community !

I need to find a way to import emails from a previous install's file system, to new install of TB.

Here's some more context :

I recently had to format a computer for a friend. He needed to keep all his mails from the past years and these were stored locally, since his profile was set in POP3 mode. Most of these old emails had previously been imported from an even older Outlook install. Unfortunately, I had no time to lookup for a "clean" export/import feature, and did not find one at first sight, so what I did was simply copy/pasting TB's file system to an external drive before formatting the device. ( C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\<etc> )

My friend's computer is now running Windows 10 with the latest version of TB installed and I need to import his old emails from the old file system.

I can find the mails in the old file system, open them even in notepad to see the details etc. but part of these seem encrypted or in a format that notepad does not support.

I can't find an import feature on TB that would allow me to access these files. How could I achieve this ?

In advance, thanks for your help !

Cheers and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all,

Thibault

I have read probably 100 of your help topics and none of them seem to address my topic in plain english. I have used Thunderbird for years on a windows computer (currently windows 10, Tbird Ver 78.6.0) and I am trying to move my profile from my windows computer to a new Mac running Big Sur Ver 11.1. Thunderbird (for some unknown reason) actually created 4 different profiles on my windows machine (two under: users/alan/AppData/Local, and the same two profiles under users/alan/AppData/roaming) but I have figured out which profile that Thunderbird is using based upon the help/troubleshooting/profile folder/open folder (which happens to be one of the ones located under: users/alan/AppData/roaming) and it is 13.9GB. I copied this folder (and all included files) to a jump drive so that I could move it to my new Mac.

  I am new to Apple and know nothing about their operating system.  I downloaded Thunderbird from the Mozilla website and installed it according to their directions.  I finally found the default profile on my Mac that was created when I installed Thunderbird and I deleted it.  I copied my existing windows profile to the same location.  Now when I start Thunderbird I am greeted with a message that states: "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded.  It may be missing or inaccessible."
  Obviously I have done something wrong.  Please direct me how to correct my problem -- it seems like this should be pretty simple, but I am lost.
  Thank you very much!!
- Alan

I tried using Thunderbird to check my Office 365 email, with the following settings

IMAP: outlook.office365.com Port: 143 SSL: STARTTLS

SMTP: smtp.office365.com Port: 587 SSL: STARTTLS

Normal Password

All the settings are retried by Thunderbird once I enter the IMAP and SMTP details.

However upon clicking done, there will be a message saying "Unable to log in at server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password"

I have verified the username and password is correct, and also IMAP enabled for this account, but keep getting password wrong message.

I am closing my btinternet account and want to be able to still read emails in future. Is there a way I can save complete emails to harddisk so I can access with Thunderbird without going through server.

Dear All, I received an update and installed it. Afterwards my TB does start but no main window appears. On the menu bar I can see a beach ball. I search a little bit and installed the latest version that I could find, which seems to be 78.6.0.

Still no change and not able to read my emails, since there is no main window.

I tries also to start the application with "option safe mode" and de-activated the add-ons and rest of the menu bar...no success so far.

Any other hint and tip that you share with me, please ?

Thanks HS

I cannot find a way to export mail filters from my old mac to new mac. Somehow all my folders made it over, guessing due to IMAP, but my contacts and filters did not. Contacts I was able to export/import - but filters I cannot figure out for the mac. Thanks!

I've been trying to migrate my email from Thunderbird on Windows 7 to Thunderbird on Linux Mint 20. I've followed the technique described in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer and it mostly doesn't work. I have moved my email to the new system and I have one gmail account sort of working. It will download new mail but will not send, and every time I click on anything I'm asked for my password again and it gives a "Could not get password for smtp.gmail.com" error when sending.

Also my address book is missing. It would appear that migrating that is a completely separate procedure that isn't documented anywhere I could find (you'd think it would be at least mentioned in the above referenced support article as address books are kinda important, but that's just me).

The linux Mint is a clean install on a new hard drive. How do I migrate email from old to new, including the address book?

Thanks in advance.

I followed the procedure for "Moving Thunderbird Data to a New Computer". https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer

The "old" computer is windows 10 running Thunderbird 68.12 32 bit. The "new" computer is Ubuntu 20.04 running Thunderbird 68.10 64 bit

The procedure above fails with the following message: "This installation of Thunderbird has a new profile. It does not share email data, passwords, user preferences and address books with other installations of Thunderbird (including Thunderbird, Thunderbird Beta, and Thunderbird Daily) on this computer."

I upgraded the "new" computer to thunderbird 68.12 64 bit with the identical result.

The next step was to start Thunderbird from the command line with the -profilemanager --allow-downgrade switches as described in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1292795.

Thunderbird starts and the profile from the "old" computer is recognized with all information transferred except for the account passwords. The saved logins list under preferences->passwords->saved passwords is completely empty. The menus here do not provide a means to add new rows. Only edit existing rows.

This result appears to be the same for both 68.10 and 68.12 on the "new" installation. I elected to stay with the default Ubuntu version (68.10)

The menus under account settings do not provide a means to update or change passwords. Attempting to create a new account with the same name produces an error about an existing server with the same name and simply hangs (the "Done" button is gray and is inoperative). Following this procedure: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switch-pop-imap-account

Not sure how to proceed. The best may be a different command line switch that will preserve the passwords from the "old" installation during the initial startup. An alternative is to fix up the password list in the "new" installation.

If I start with a new profile in "new" computer, the add account procedures work flawlessly.

Suggestions please on a method to resolve this password transfer problem from Windows to Linux.