Thunderbird Community Forum

This is second request (can't find the first). I need to import multiple (bookoo) .EML files into TB 115.10 to later move into "folders". Several weeks ago I somehow found someway to import a single .EML file (downloaded from an old ISP) into TB -- and then got busy with other projects -- and now cannot figure how I did it. I did not use an extension (ImportExportTools NG) -- just the native tools in TB 115.10. If anyone is familiar with importing EML files -- sure would appreciate suggestions. Thanks.

I just upgraded my desktop pc from Windows 10 to 11, and before the upgrade I used the Tools Export function to export my complete Thunderbird profile, so I could import it after the upgrade. Unfortunately the export file cannot be read on my upgraded pc using the Import function - Thunderbird gives me error messages every time, that suggest the exported folder might be corrupted or invalid.

My IMAP emails are fine, as I have set those accounts up from scratch and the folders have now populated with all the emails - the problem is all my filed emails, dating back many years, which were all stored manually in a filing system under Local Folders.

I tried manually copying across the individual files from the extracted back-up folder into my live Thunderbird profile and then reopened Thunderbird...which worked to some extent...as in, all the folders are there, but no emails are showing! It shows no messages under each folder, even though if you look under the Profile you can see that the email files exist.

I tried various ways to bring them in, including zipping one of the folders and trying to import from the zip file (which also brought in a folder but no emails) but even though the email files are clearly there under my profile, Thunderbird shows 0 messages in all my Local Folders. It's as though it is unaware the files exist, so I suspect it needs them to be formally imported somehow?

I would hate to lose the emails, as they document important information and purchases etc over many years, along with archived emails for my charity work, social events, etc. As I said, I can see the files are there but simply copying the files to my profile has only worked to the extent the filing 'structure' is visible, Thunderbird doesn't display any of the emails.

I have included two images...one of my Thunderbird Local Folders as they currently look, and the other showing the backed up files existing in my Profile, which I hope are helpful.

Can anyone help please? I am running a desktop PC on Windows 11. Thanks, David.

How can I install Thunderbird on an external USB drive for my Mac, and, import an mbox to it (or a bunch of mboxes?) that also lives on that external drive? And keep this email account data disconnected from the original account it came from, that is, do NOT have it sync with Gmail? Perhaps it's best if I describe my situation and the result I'm trying to achieve.... (sorry for the length of this question; I'm trying to be precise and comprehensive at the same time 😬)

Situation: 1. Used macOS Mail for years, to manage a Gmail account 2. Recently used takeout.google.com to download the mbox for this account, which turned out to be 91.01GB (!) 3. I tried using macOS Mail on another computer to open it, and it's not happening; file seems too large; I get an error message saying the Mac's memory has been used up and Mail has stopped working 4. I'm currently waiting for a subsequent Google Takeout download that I expect will consist of many, many mbox files (each mbox corresponding to its own label, according to How to Download/Export Emails with Google Takeout) 5. I have limited space on my computer and would like to avoid accommodating 91.01+GB of historical email data

Desired result: 1. I'm basically trying to create a back-up of all my Gmail emails so that... 2. I can delete a bunch of them, reorganize them, etc. using my macOS Mail program, while being confident that... 3. I can always return to the easily accessible and searchable emails in Thunderbird

Add'l Thoughts/Specific questions: 1. Can I install and run the macOS version of Thunderbird on an external USB thumbdrive by simply dragging the TB app icon to the external drive to start the installation process? 2. Assuming TB has successfully been installed on the external drive, how do I make sure TB knows that the data from the mbox(es) I import should "live" on the external drive as well?

Thank you so much for reading and in advance for your advice.

TDS is dropping support for email services 10/31/2026. They are providing an option to migrate our data to a new provider Everymail, I'm wondering what other options I have and what it means to my current mail data(Inbox, Archive etc..) if I go to another provider(not Everymail)?

I've used just the default profile I setup when I started using Thunderbird, I can't tell where all of that data is stored and I don't want to loose some of the Archived messages from over the years.

 When I click on properties for the Thunderbird Archive Folder it shows:

mailbox://botto%40chorus.net@mail.tds.net/Archive

Is this data on my local storage or on TDS?

Any help here would be appreciated, Thanks

I converted my old Outlook emails in to MBOX using the Syscurve conversion software, and then moved the MBOX file into my Local Folder for Thunderbird. When I open Thunderbird it sees the file, but does not see the folders or messages inside the file. The Local Folder has the following three files in it (plus the trash, etc.): output_20251127110416.mbox 4,194,310 kb output_20251127110416.mbox.msf 2 kb output_20251127110416.msf 2 kb Thunderbird shows the output_20251127110416.mbox in the Local Folder but says no messages found when I click on it. How do I get Thunderbird to see the mbox files?

Mon compte thunderbird a été supprimé En réinstallant Thunderbird, j'ai récupéré la réception des mails récents et le carnet d'adresses mais perdu les messages envoyés, en instance , les brouilons, les archives. Je les vois toujours dans C/Utilisateurs/nom/Appadata/roaming/Thunderbird/Mail/pop.sfr.fr et ensuite dans archives.sbd et inbox.sbd . Comment les importer dans thunderbird. J'ai essayé l'importation du profil sans succès. Merci de votre aide

I have three email accounts on my computer, one IMAP and two POP. I need to move these accounts to a new Windows 11 computer. I want all of the accounts on the new computer to be IMAP. So I have two POP accounts containing messages that I need to move to IMAP accounts on my new computer.

When I open the profile folder on my current computer it has a MAIL folder and a ImapMail folder. The MAIL folder contains a Local Folder and a pop.1and1.com folder. Each of these subfolders contains the Inbox, Sent, Trash etc. folders that contain the email messages to be moved to the new computer.

I see lots of information on moving the profile but that doesn't address the POP to IMAP conversion issue or the fact there are three different accounts involved.

I just installed Thunderbird, linked it to my primary email account (ok!) and then tried to import one year's worth of email messages exported from my Apple Mail client as .mbox folders with an underlying folder structure (1 per month). Thunderbird went away for about 2 hours "downloading" and importing ( ... looking good!), but at the end my "Local Folder: Apple Mail Import" still shows no messages. Where are they and how can I access them in the Thunderbolt client?

I have 6 email accounts in Thunderbird (TB). 4 recently created IMAP accounts and two POP accounts.

I recently added an IMAP email client for my domain name. There already exists a POP account for this domain name and I’ve had it since TB came out (I used Pegasus Mail before).

The account names are displayed the same in TB except the IMAP account. "___@___.com" The above is the POP account and it only displays the email name: "___@___com"

"___@___.com IMAP" The above IMAP account also displays the word “IMAP” in the title.

I have over 46000 messages in 58 sub folders on this POP account and I want to keep all of them for now.

My biggest question is - when I Delete the POP account, "will TB also delete all the sub folders at the same time ?"

Right now, the Inbox on the IMAP account does not retain any messages. When I start TB, we know it auto checks all email accounts and downloads new mail to each account. Emails to my domain name go to the IMAP account first. When I open the Inbox in the IMAP account, I can see all the downloaded messages but only for a second. They disappear from IMAP and transfer to the POP account.

Every 10 minutes after that, TB downloads messages from all accounts again. This time any messages to the IMAP account can be opened & viewed. They can also be deleted or moved to another folder. 3 to 5 minutes later, they ALL appear in the POP account. Any messages not deleted remain in the POP account Inbox. No messages remain in the Inbox for the IMAP account.

I know I need to move all the folders and sub folders from the POP account display to the IMAP account display. This is going to take a while. Like I said, the Inbox will not retain any mail, it automatically moves to the POP account after 3 to 5 minutes.

I have moved the ‘Sent’ mail folder to the IMAP account and started on some of my Archives files. The first one I moved from POP to IMAP was a ‘Sent 2008-2015' folder. This folder has 5363 messages. I just did a ‘drag and drop’ with my left mouse button from the POP Archive folder to the IMAP Archive folder. It worked like a charm. Took a couple of minutes and you could see TB counting off the messages being moved at the bottom of the screen.

Seem like TB was teasing me, it will no longer copy large count sub folders with ‘drag and drop’. I think that first folder is the largest. TB will sometimes create the proper folder name but not move any messages. I have to go in and select 100 or so messages at a time and 'drag and drop' them into the newly created folder in the IMAP account. Sometime I ‘drag and drop’ and TB doesn’t do anything. It going to be tedious to get all my email moved from POP to IMAP. Of course, I will do it if necessary but is there some other method of moving the sub folders from the POP to the IMAP account that is faster ?

I created IMAP accounts for my two other POP accounts and I only had to move the Inbox mail from POP to IMAP. One of the POP accounts only had the Inbox and Trash folders and the other one had those 2 plus five sub folders. One of these folders have 3381 messages. Had to move them 100 or so at a time. The other 4 folders had a small number of messages and transferred easily. Deleting the POP accounts at that point was no problem.

So, again, my biggest concern is deleting the main POP account and TB deleting the sub folders. If I have to get them moved before deleting, so be it.

Thanks for any help.

Hi, Can I have in thunderbird several separate local folders whose data is stored in different directories on my hard disk? if yes, how can I configure this? so far I have one lokal folder (next to many email accounts)... and if yes, can I move one of these folders to a different machine with another thunderbird and import it there?

kind regards Chris

New laptop. Took it to the Geek Squad to move the data from my wife's old computer to new. They had me sign in to Windows on the new machine and perform the setup steps, then took it and the old computer to do the data transfer. The issue is that the returned new computer had my MS profile on it but my wife's mail under that profile.

To try to correct this, I set up my wife's profile on the new laptop and my thought was to export the email from my MS account's TB data to a public folder, turn off TB and sign off my MS profile, sign back on to my wife's MS profile, start TB and import the zip file in the public folder. However, it tells me the folder is too large and I must unzip and import from the extracted folder. Windows Explorer won't let me unzip the file saying it's not a valid zip file. Ideas?

Thanks!

When I reinstalled Thunderbird, I got my account back, but the Local Folders were missing. I found where they're hiding on my computer, but I can't figure out how/where to copy and paste that folder so they show up in Thunderbird. Can someone walk me through those last steps, please?

Thanks

I am using Thunderbird 128.0 under Windows 10. I routinely archive old emails, with the archives stored in my local Thunderbird folders.

I'd like to periodically delete the older archives, but to keep some sort of backup copy. Is there any way I can copy or export the archive folders to somewhere else, such as another folder on my computer or an external drive?

And if I succeed in doing this, will it be possible to search the copy, and to restore individual messages if necessary?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mike

I am trying to copy and paste from my old HP Envy laptop the Local Folders that have 3 email accounts onto my new HP Spectr allinone laptop. Toad Hall helped me in the past to recover all of the emails from being changed from POP to IMAP as directed by Comcast support. All is working perfectly fine with all of the comcast emails within 3 accounts under Local Folders.

The issue now is I just downloaded Thunderbird onto my new HP Spectre and followed Toad's suggestion: Now to locate those folders

windows search type : %Appdata% Select %Appdata% file folder Select the 'Roaming' folder Select the 'Thunderbird' folder Select the profile name folder Select the 'Mail' folder Select the 'Local Folders' folder

But there is no 'Mail' folder and no 'Local Folders' folder at all. I did find it under the profile name with release and tried to paste the Local Folders but when I launched Thunderbird there was nothing appearing under Local Folders under Account Settings. The path for Local Directory said:

Local Directory: C:\Users\Fred\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\4e3....default (not showing 100% of the profile name for security purposes) There is no \Mail\Local Folders appearing.

I did copy 3 Comcast Local email folders from the HP Envy onto my external hard drive of the sbd folders. Inside each of the sbd folders are the Inbox, Sent and Trash files

All of the 3 Comcast emails setup on IMAP were successfully setup and all of the emails were received. So that part is working perfectly fine.

I just need help getting all of the Local Folders pasted from the old HP Envy to the HP Sprectr laptop.

Thank you to all of you for any help you can offer on this!

Had issues with Comcast emails. They were set up with POP settings. Was on the phone with Comcast and uninstalled 3 email addresses and reinstalled using IMAP settings. I did not delete the message data leaving that box unchecked. After about 1.5 hours on the phone with Comcast was able to get the reinstalled Comcast email addresses to pull all of the emails off Comcast website. But there are emails that are missing from each of the inbox and sent folders for each of the 3 Comcast email addresses.

I do an incremental weekly backup using Acronis True Image 2020 Home Edition. I see the folders in the path but since they were saved last Saturday under POP settings, the backups I will need to try to recover are in 3 of the Comcast folders in the "MAIL" folder and not "IMAPMAIL" folder which listed 6 folders from imap.comcast1.net through imapcomcast6.net.

What do I need to copy from the correct Comcast folder called "Profile" where the izpoojy7.default is? Within this izpoojy7.default is the folder mail.comcast-1.net which has 1 of the 3 Comcast email addresses I need to recover the inboxes and sent folder emails. Please see the attached photo of the contents of this mail.comcast-1.net folder.

Do I just copy the Inbox.mozmsgs as well as the Sent.mozmsgs files? Or do I also need to recover more of the files within the respective mail.comcast-1.net folder? Thank you for any assistance you can offer on this matter.

How do I make a backup copy of my Thunderbird email client, saving all the subfolders? I would like to then uninstall Thunderbird and then reinstall it, as a new user, and without losing any of my old user folders. Thanks. After I do this, will I be able to reload all the old subfolders and read those messages?

Your import procedure, used with several options, creates only empty folders "Importation Apple Mail".

Thunderbird 128.5.2esr (64 bits) Mail Version 16.0 (3776.700.51.11.1)

I have a Thunderbird email account on a Windows PC & wish to move it to a new Linux PC. On Windows I used the Export facility to save the entire account to a zip file, transferred that file to Linux & used the Thunderbird import facility.

This failed immediately...

• The Thunderbird main desktop window vanished, leaving no progress feedback.
• I gave it quite a long time to complete the process but there was no further feedback.
• I then right-clicked the icon, Quit Thunderbird & re-started it. No desktop window opened.
• The only thing that worked from the right-click pop-up was the Write New Message function which did open a new email message.
• I then uninstalled Thunderbird selecting the full uninstall option to get rid of any account data, & re-installed it.
• Still the same problem: no main desktop window, & only Write New Message works.

Any advice on what may be wrong & how to fix it would be much appreciated.

I have just installed Thunderbird (Windows), and have converted Outlook .PST file to MBOX. I can see the folder-structure in Thunderbird from the .PST file, but Thunderbird say "no messengers" when accessing the result/any folder. I can read the rawdata in the MBOX files with Notebook, and the data is there. Why do not Thunderbird pick up the data? Any setup? I was using "ReliefJet Essentials for Outlook" when converting the .PST file