Thunderbird Community Forum

I was using a web mail client and it deleted my inbox. I have a backup of Inbox and Inbox.msf file on my local computer and keep copying it into the correct folder, but every time I start Thunderbird, it syncs from the server down and deletes all the messages in my inbox file.

How do I tell it to sync the local messages back up to the server or is there a good/better way to do it?

I have an email account with BlueHost, which also hosts my web domain. A couple weeks ago I stopped receiving emails and contacted BlueHost tech support. The agent had no clue why I wasn't receiving email. She said "Can you please click on acocunt actions and remove the account and re-addd it. [sic]" I did that, and I was again able to receive emails. But then all my old emails -- sent and received -- had disappeared. BlueHost was able to restore my Inbox emails back to May 19, but was not able to recover any Sent emails. I have a backup of my Thunderbird directory from April, but would like to recover all of my old emails, which apparently still exist because my current Thunderbird Profiles directory contains files corresponding to deleted email folders. For example, my Inbox had a subfolder -- call it ABC -- that was deleted and is no longer visible in my Inbox, but I can find files ABC (no extension) and ABC.msf in my Inbox.sbd folder. My Sent.sbd folder also contains files ABC and ABC.msf. These folders are in C:\Users\aaa\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\aaa.default\Mail\mail.aaa.com (with "aaa" representing my personal identifiers). mail.aaa.com contains files Inbox, Inbox.msf, Sent, and Sent.msf, which seem to contain my old emails. (Inbox is 132,151 KB and Sent is 289,829 KB, and the file dates are from a couple weeks ago, when I removed and re-added the email account.)

Is there a way that I can recover the old emails?

On the 20, of October I was forced to re install Windows 10. Kept my data but I had to re install all my apps. With Thunderbird I follow the same procedure I used with Firefox: After installation I copied the profile folder from my backup and replaced the new one. That worked out well. With Thunderbird, I followed the same procedure, all my emails where there but not my local folders. I am attaching several snapshots to illustrate my steps. Image 1 "local folders now" Image 2 "Profile Folder". (why there are 2 sub-folders)? Image 3 "Mail in the profile folder" Image 4 " List of folders in my Local Folders" The are there, how do I get them back on Thunderbird in the correct place "Local Folders"? Thank you for your help again. Regards Ilio Pieroni

Have two email accounts: Outlook and Gmail. They check and pull mail off the servers independently. I would prefer to only have to look in ONE account for my mail. I have chosen Outlook. I am having problems getting Thunderbird to push the emails in my Gmail folders to the corresponding Outlook folders. Is that because it can't be done? In settings for GMail account, under Copies and folders, I push: Sent messages > Sent on d*******1@outlook.com Archives folder > Archive on d*******1@outlook.com Drafts > Drafts folder on d*******1@outlook.com but they don't seem to be going there.

Is there a way to move messages in GMail TRASH to Outlook DELETED? As you can see, I'm not very aquainted with these things and am pretty confused. Any help appreciated.

I need to import an MBOX file, but every version of ImportExportTools NG says it is incompatible with my version. I checked and it says I am up to date for Thunderbird, version 136.0. What can I do to be able to use ImportExportTools? Or is there another way I can import the files?

I started using Netscape Email in 1996. Moved to Tbird. I have archived emails by year going back to 1996 on my old desktop PC (Win 10). I bought a new PC (Win 11) and installed Tbird. I entered my email account info into Tbird and started receiving emails. I then followed the instructions for moving the Tbird emails from the old computer to the new. (I went to Troubleshooting Info on the old computer, opened the Profile Folder, went up to the Thunderbird folder, copied it to an external hard drive, and pasted it in the same place on the new computer.)

I opened Tbird, the archives folders do not show up. I looked in the Profile Folder, and I have three profiles. (I tried pasting twice.) A picture is attached. The old computer only shows the top one (59t8...).

How do I get my archived folders back, or how do I have Tbird on the new computer use the profile on the old one?

Thanks, - Andy

I have TBird version: 128.6.1 esr (64 bit).

I have several accounts and I want to back up just one of them. However, they all use the same folder (.../.thunderbird/<name>.default) for storage so Export only wants to store this folder. Drilling down using "Browse", I see that below that are all the folders stored as ".../.thunderbird/<name>.default/Mail/<My account>". If I just copy this folder, can I restore this account in the future if I copy it back to this location? I want to retain the contents as the account is going to be closed and removed from its server. Thank you.

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

I’m on a Mac using the Sequoia OS (not ready to update yet to Tahoe). I recently left Microsoft Outlook, my e-mail client for years, because of all the crashing and when I would update, all the stored e-mails disappeared. I am now using Apple Mail and the export function doesn’t work most of the time. Apple tech support did some things that told me they are automatic backups, but I can’t see them.

I use Thunderbird on an old PC and would like to also use it on my Mac. However, when attempting to import, it starts and finishes in about one second, importing nothing. The files are in .mbox format. What am I doing wrong trying to import these files?

Jag har köpt ny dator och vill flytta alla lokala mappar och kontakter från mitt gamla Thunderbird till mitt nya. Jag har öppnat profilmappen och försökt kopiera in den, men inget händer!?

I have Thunderbird installed on windows 11 and have the import export NG tools add-on. I have an mobx file locally that I am trying to import to thunderbird. I created a local folder and started the import but almost immediately I get this error: "TypeError: window.ietngAddon.mboxCopyImport is not a function", and the only thing that gets imported is the name of the mbox file, as a subfolder

Is it possible to copy just the Mail folder from a Thunderbird Profile backup in Time Machine on Mac? I have deleted an email account from Thunderbird and I did not tick Delete Data so the emails are still there in my Profile but they no longer show up in the tree in Thunderbird on my Mac ( OS 14.8 Sonoma). I had a lot of subfolders into which I had put incoming and sent emails on particular topics. For example I had a folder called Family, and inside that I had a subfolder called Birthdays as well as many other family related topics. My last Time Machine back up is about a month ago but that would be good enough to restore from. I tried ‘Import’ in Thunderbird but it only imported the main folders and the emails within but not the subfolders. I have another email address besides the deleted one and if I overwrite the whole Profile with the older one from Time Machine it will lose a lot of new stuff accumulated since that backup. Any help most appreciated

I am attempting to transfer my Thunderbird Profile from and old computer (call it "SOURCE") to a new computer ("TARGET"). I have tried everything prescribed in the documentation. It fails every time.

[1] I tried importing the ".Thunderbird\Profiles\xyz.default: folder from SOURCE to TARGET (Tools -> Import). It starts the import, but soon aborts with the incomprehensible message:

1747152229330 addons.xpi WARN Checking C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\distribution\extensions for addons Found 0 public keys and 0 secret keys (0 protected, 0 unprotected) RNPLib.jsm:559:15 1747152229736 addons.xpi WARN Addon with ID thunderbird-compact-light@mozilla.org already installed, older version will be disabled 1747152229736 addons.xpi WARN Addon with ID thunderbird-compact-dark@mozilla.org already installed, older version will be disabled Uncaught NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE: Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIWebProgress.addProgressListener] <anonymous> chrome://messenger/content/aboutMessage.js:119 aboutMessage.js:119 1747152289419 Toolkit.Telemetry WARN TelemetryStorage::_scanArchive - have seen this id before: e4a0732e-f511-4cb6-ba38-be42dbd2b48f, overwrite: false Uncaught (in promise) NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND: Component returned failure code: 0x80520012 (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) [nsIFile.copyTo] _recursivelyCopyMsgFolder resource:///modules/ThunderbirdProfileImporter.jsm:659 _importMailMessages resource:///modules/ThunderbirdProfileImporter.jsm:588 _importServersAndAccounts resource:///modules/ThunderbirdProfileImporter.jsm:248 2 ThunderbirdProfileImporter.jsm:659

I have tried importing over a network, and also after copying the whole Profile from SOURCE to TARGET first, in an intermediate work area.

[2] I can't Zip my Profile, it's 16GB.

[3] I tried manually copying the profile directly from SOURCE to TARGET's "C:\Users\myLoginID\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\". When I start Thunderbird, it only shows the first few email folders, the rest are missing.

I have used this procedure successfully many years ago between two other computers.

I am desperate, I put my trust in Thunderbird, and now I cannot move forward, my business is in jeopardy. My old computer has started failing, it's on its last legs, and could soon become unusable.

I contribute to Thunderbird every year, and am a strong supporter.

Bonjour, J'ai Thunderbird depuis très longtemps et j'ai toujours pris l'habitude de stocker tous mes mails dans le répertoire "Dossiers locaux" qui se trouvait toujours sur un HDD différent de celui ou était installé Thunderbird. A chaque nouvelle installation de Thunderbird, je renseignais le chemin ou était stocké "Dossiers Locaux" et hop en 30s, j'avais tous mes messages archivés depuis des années. Je viens de changer de version de Ubuntu (24.04.3 LTS) et la nouveau Thunderbird (140.7.1 esr), donc comme d'habitude je renseigne le chemin de mon répertoire local "Dossiers Locaux" mais rien ne remonte dans Thunderbird ? J'ai essayé (bidouillé) plein de petits trucs sans succès et je ne m'en sort pas ! Pouvez-vous svp me renseigner ?

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

The 'Sent' file in my 'Mail' folder exceeds 3 GB (3,224,360,399 bytes) and is not being read in the TB Mail window. How can I reduce the size of this file AND save messages???

'Sent' message folder IS searchable!!!

I have made a backup of my Thunderbird profile using this method:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer

If my computer crashes I can restore my messages and settings from this backup, or if I buy a new PC I can copy the data over from a backup made the same day.

The backup contains settings and local folders, but my concern is that the backup also contains the contents of my regular inbox at the time of copying.

The contents in my inbox changes over time, so naturally it will differ from the saved inbox contents in the backup.

So what happens when I paste an older backup into the Thunderbird folder? Will this data overwrite all the contents in my inbox and basically revert the inbox to an older state? Or will my inbox be crammed with doubles?

Since I use IMAP, any changes to the messages in Thunderbird will sync to the mail server, so I really don't want to do anything that deletes things or makes a mess on the mail server.

Of course, it can be good to have a copy of my messages if the mail server crashes, but if I only need to transfer data to a new PC or restore my data after a computer crash, I would rather just download the up-to-date inbox contents from the server. At the same time, it's important to me to make this backup since I want to be able to transfer my settings and local folders.

In this case, should I remove some files in the backed up profile folder before the transfer? If so, which files? The folder structure and content of the subfolders "Mail" and "ImapMail" aren't very intuitive, with various subfolders and multiple files named "Inbox" of various sizes.

Appreciating any clarifications on the matter and help to avoid conflicts between copied/backed up profiles and my current inbox.

Jeg har brugt microsoft 365 med outlook og oprettet Gruppe mails, den ville jeg gerne importere sammen med mine kontakter, men den kommer ikke med. Kan jeg få den med i Thunderbird eller skal jeg oprette den manuelt. De kontakter der er i gruppen kommer alle med når jeg vælger den som modtager i mails. gør den også det i Thunderbird. Kan jeg tilføje flere kontakter / mail adresser fra adressebogen uden at skal indtaste en enkelvis. I outlook er der mulighed for at åbne gruppen og via tilføj , tilføje flere kontakter fra adresse kartoteket til gruppen.

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