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Hello- I am having a major problem recovering both emails in my inbox, and more specifically all of my local folders. I am using Windows 11, Pop-3 server. My Local Directory keeps reverting to att-1.net and changes I made to my prefs.js file to eliminate the att-1.net folder and revert to an att-net folder containing all the data are not sticking. I've tried using Claude to diagnose and correct, but that hasn't worked. I am not extremely proficient at this, which is probably part of my problem. Any advice would be welcome.

06 May 2026 USA Just to inform users:

All mailboxes and all mail in profile are catastrophically and irretrievably deleted when I: 1. Change the location of the profile folder. 2. Make appropriate change in profiles.ini reflecting the location change. 3. Launch Thunderbird in Offline Mode (launching in OFFLINE mode is the fatal event). 4. Mailboxes will appear during this one launched session

    but

5. If Thunderbird is closed while still OFFLINE, then a re-launch of Thunderbird in any state will reveal

     that all mailboxes and all mail have been deleted.

All mailboxes, and of course, all mail in the profile are catastrophically and irretrievably deleted. I was lucky that I made a backup before changing profile location.

The deletion of mail and mailboxes occur at the close of Thunderbird's OFFLINE state. An examination of the profile folder indicates the destruction has occurred upon closing of Thunderbird in OFFLINE state.

It is not the re-launch of Thunderbird that causes the catastrophic deletion. The deletion occurred when Thunderbird was closed in its OFFLINE state.

To successfully change the profile location I must: 1. Make the change to profile location. 2. Make the appropriate change to profiles.ini 3. BE SURE to make the FIRST LAUNCH of Thunderbird in ONLINE mode--ONLINE only. 4. Once 1,2,3 are done, then Thunderbird does not corrupt the profile folder.

Conditions that MIGHT make my configuration uniquely affected: 1. I use Proton Mail Bridge in conjunction with Thunderbird. 2. My Profile folder is on a network share that is letter-mapped in Windows. 3. I have about 10 email addresses in Thunderbird that are Outlook IMAP, Gmail IMAP, and of course, Proton Mail.

I've been using Thunderbird a couple of years in this configuration with no problems. I just decided to rename my profile. So, this is my first discovery of the problem.

Yesterday I was having trouble sending emails from one of my email accounts. I had not fixed that when I shut down for the night. Today when I turned my computer on, both my email accounts and my address book was gone

Good morning,

I’m reaching out because I’m having trouble with my Thunderbird email and need some assistance.

I was using Thunderbird without any issues before, but now all my old emails have disappeared. I can still receive new messages, but I’m unable to send emails like I used to. I also can’t recover or view any of my previous emails.

It seems like something may have reset or become corrupted, and I’m not sure how to restore my old messages or fix the sending issue.

Could you please help me get Thunderbird working properly again and recover my old emails if possible?

Thank you for your support.

Dee

My wife and I both have Thunderbird accounts. The issue is that when we open Thunderbird, both accounts show on one screen. Is there any way to separate logins and only show each of our accounts on the screen?

Thanks, Sam Orner

Thunderbird is suddenly opening without any of my emails or folders, and asking me to set up an email account - so I put in my email details (I'm with aol) - and it connects to the aol server and my folders re-appear (initially without emails in them, but when I click on the folders the emails start downloading afresh from aol). So it seems that all will be well when the emails are all downloaded again. HOWEVER, after closing Thunderbird and opening it again, all my emails are gone again, and Thunderbird is yet again asking me to set up an account. I can do this again, and the same thing will happen again. Everything is lost again when Thunderbird is closed, and when I start it again, I will be asked to set up an account, and all my emails are gone yet again. I have been using Thunderbird for years and years and years. Suddenly out of the blue this happens, and I'm stuck with using aol's web mail platform directly (not great!!!) Also, Thunderbird suddenly looks different - like it's been updated (which I assumed initially had happened) but the update history still only shows the final release for Windows 7, so this is a bit puzzling, and an odd coincidence that the layout and appearance of Thunderbird has changed at the very same time it stops working for me.

Have been using Thunderbird for years. Tried to set it up so my wife could also use it but the profile was the same as mine so when I deleted her profile, it also deleted mine and now I do not have access. How can I recover my profile so I can have access to all my previous emails and email addresses??? Also, since I cannot access the profile it will not open the app menu so I do not have access to the version.

is there any way to perform a dynamic backup of Thunderbird. By that I mean a regular (e.g. daily) backup of the profile or at least the mailboxes using a scheduler without closing Thunderbird down?

First, I have very limited understanding of software. I need very simple explanations.

Here's my issue. I use Thunderbird on my desktop computer. I have used the Import/Export > Options > Backup Scheduling function to backup my Thunderbird email to my USB/flash drive. I have labelled the backup folder on my flash drive "Thunderbird email backup." That folder contains numerous subfolders including: 1) calendar-data 2) chrome_debugger_profile 3) crashes 4) datareporting 5) extensions 6) ExternalMailFolders 7) Mail 8) minidumps 9) saved-telemetry-pings 10) scheduled-notifications 11) settings 12) shader-cache 13) storage.

Again, these are the subfolders created/named by the Thunderbird Import/Export backup. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THESE FOLDERS MEAN.

Here's what I want - it's actually very simple. I want to be able to see (read) my backed up email on my flash drive without using the Thunderbird installed on my computer. I want complete interaction with the backed up email without my desktop Thunderbird - or my online email account - being involved at all.

My understanding is that Thunderbird Portable is supposed to be able to allow me to do that. I downloaded Thunderbird Portable (from https://portableapps.com) to my flash drive but when I tried to access it the first thing it did was try to force me to put in my online account (POP?) information.

I don't want to do that. I just want to open Thunderbird Portable on the flash drive and have it realize that all of my backed up Thunderbird email information is right there in the same flash drive. I want it to just access and use what's right there.

I was really hoping that Thunderbird Portable would simply ask me where to look - in a very user-friendly way! - and I could tell it to go to my "Thunderbird email backup" folder on my flash drive (WHERE ALL MY THUNDERBIRD INFO IS!) and it would simply do just that and provide me with complete Thunderbird service for the backed up email.

Am I missing something? Can someone give me a VERY SIMPLE walk through to do what I would think should be a very simple thing? Thank you. Chris (6/29/26)

PS - I've read the Mozilla Support ARTICLE: Thunderbird Portable (Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition) and other portable apps as alternatives (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1285834) and it alludes in general terms to exactly what I want to do but it does not give any step-wise instructions.

Hello,

I need help recovering my old emails from Thunderbird.

I am using a POP account. Recently, I changed the message storage location from the C: drive to the F: drive. After doing this, Thunderbird only shows recent emails, while my old emails are missing.

Here is what I have checked:

The mailbox files still exist on the F: drive. Inbox file: approximately 1.1 GB Sent file: approximately 1.18 GB I also have a complete Thunderbird profile backup of approximately 2.73 GB. The profile contains prefs.js, the Mail folder, and all profile files. Some account folders such as: pop.accessarchitects.in pop.accessarchitects-1.in pop.accessarchitects-2.in have Inbox files that are 0 KB. However, another mailbox file named Inbox is about 1.1 GB, which appears to contain my old messages. Thunderbird downloads and displays new emails correctly, but it does not display the old emails. I previously had around 60,000+ emails organised into many custom folders such as Contracts, Bills, Axis Bank Statements, Notifications, etc. Some mailbox files still have large sizes, but Thunderbird does not display their contents. My folder structure F:\Mails\

   Inbox (1.1 GB)
   Sent (1.18 GB)
   Inbox.sbd
   Local Folders.sbd

Inside Local Folders.sbd, I also have mailbox files such as:

Inbox (~642 MB) contract & bill (~778 MB)

The data appears to exist, but Thunderbird is not recognising or indexing it.

My Questions How can I reconnect these existing mailbox files without losing any data? Is there a way to rebuild the indexes so Thunderbird recognises the old messages? Could the issue be caused by an incorrect profile mapping after changing the storage location?

I have not deleted the original mailbox files, and I have a complete profile backup available.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I cannot get thunderbird to run on my computer (it runs fine on my wife's computer). I keep getting the profile can't be loaded error. I have tried the fixes recommend here but none worked.

I'm having a connectivity issues. Did some searching which directed me to the Appdata Profiles folder. When looking inside I see Mail and ImapMail. Both have numerous folders inside. Too may I believe. Based upon the screen prints of the folder's contents, do you see conflicts?

I have three email addresses with Outlook.com.

Pop.windstream I have not used in many years. Not sure what others I could possible delete.

Thanks.

Dell windows 11 computer self destructed and crashed hard. Lost Thunderbird emails but have an Acronis cloud backup. Have purchased a new Dell EBT 2250 computer with windows 11 pro.

QUESTION 1: What are the proper procedures of installing Thunderbird and recovering my past "stuff" which was located at C:\users\My-Username\AppData\Roaming where Thunderbird kept my email data..If I install Thunderbird on the box, it would create that structure to create the Thunderbird data folder.

QUESTION 2: What are the proper procedures in recovering Thunderbird past data before I open it to my email server (Yahoo) where I have directly been maintaining my new emails via browser. I was going to install Thunderbird, then replace the Thunderbird folder under the user/username/AppData/Roaming, but when installing TB forces you to give an email account and P/W to log into your email. I do NOT want to have the email at Yahoo brought down before I can confirm I have restored all my past emails from my backup Thunderbird fold.

Question 3: Is there a way of installing TB in order to get the structure it uses, then overlay the TB structure under my user id?

I didn't want to restore my new Desktop with the OS recovery method because of the completely different hardware that OS would encounter once it tried to come up under a completely different hardware environment.

Thanks to anyone who can help me in what I should do, Floyd Smith

I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird for many years without any issues.

A few minutes ago, I used Thunderbird as usual and then closed it. When I tried to open it again, it would not respond. I restarted my Windows 11 laptop, but after rebooting, Thunderbird opened as if it were a fresh installation. None of my email accounts, settings, or data are there.

I signed in to one of my email accounts, hoping Thunderbird would automatically recover my previous accounts and settings, but nothing happened.

I am using Windows 11 and Thunderbird version 140.13.0 (64-bit).

Could you please help me recover my existing Thunderbird profile, email accounts, and data? I would greatly appreciate your assistance.

Thank you.

When I opened Thunderbird two days ago it came up with the following message: To use your current email address, fill in your credentials. Thunderbird will automattically search for working and recommended server configurations. It asked for Full Name; Email: and Password. Fearing it was a scam I filled in my server settings manually. My server is Centurylink but my email address is embarqmail.com so when I filled in my info the send was smpt.centurylink.net port 587 (which was fine) The problem was with receive: I guess my old setup was pop.embarqmail.com port 110 and I put in pop.centurylink.net port 995 which is what Centurylink's website called for. Well this one worked and it downloaded 800 messages but no saved folders and the Thunderbird screen layout looks different from the one I am used to. A few minutes later the pop.embarqmail setup downloaded the same messages but still no saved messages. It looks like I have 2 profiles. Did the last one I entered override the old and wipe out files I had stored. Is there a fix for this mess I have created and can I retreive my old folders and messages? I tried doing a system restore and it didn't work due to corrupted files. Oh, I'm still using windows 7. Thanks

As explained in the subject line - title, I do NOT need nor use the Today Pane.

It use taking up needed space for the down arrow & popping up distracting me.

How do I eliminate it? I will even, if necessary edit Thunderbird to get rid of it.

'AND bold text' somehow, a new version of Thunderbird was created - downloaded and all my passwords AND bookmarks are gone. I looked for the profile, but it's new so does not contain passwords NOR bookmarks.

THANKS! Remain WELL & be SAFE!

Robin

I have a profile set that uses IMAP and need to change this to POP. I have tried changing the settings and tried creating a new profile by exporting folders and files but nothing is working correctly.

One problem I have is that in the IMAP profile I now have a second email address that is the same address name but is a POP setup. This is confusing. When I use the POP email to export and then import into a new profile I again get two email addresses in the folder panel of the new profile and one of them does have folders but they are empty.

Below is a screen shot of the original IMAP Profile. The upper address has folders but they are now blank because I pasted them in the lower address. I have tried selecting/highlighting the lower address for exporting but when I do I get the two addresses but the folders are empty/blank.

Thank you for any help!

Rick