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Rohkem teavet

Can't find stored files I have had for many years,

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hostetter
hostetter

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

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

All Replies (1)

Matt
Matt
  • Top 10 Contributor

yeah, Thunderbird has decided you need a new profile folder. This is usually just garbage and can be overridden occasionally it is the result of a corrupt preferences file.

Back in 2019 I wrote this blog post because the developers had dropped the ball. It is still rolling around somewhere as far as I can figure, but the post contains details of the command line options you can use to force Thunderbird to use your old profile as well as so things you can do in Thunderbird without using the command line. As long as the settings file in the profile folder is not missing or physically damaged you should be able to force the profile to open from about:profiles.

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