Windows 10 reached EOS (end of support) on October 14, 2025. If you are on Windows 10, see this article.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Rohkem teavet

Computer failure - loss of thunderbird emails - recovery of Thunderbird on much newer desktop windows 11 computer

  • 1 vastus
  • 0 on selline probleem
  • Viimati vastas Lin
  • Open

Floyd Smith
Floyd Smith

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

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

All Replies (1)

Lin
Lin
  • Top 10 Contributor

Can I assume this is an IMAP account? If so...

You only need your backed-up copy of your Thunderbird Profiles folder, nothing else. The default location is C:\users\My-Username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird, as you know. This folder contains your actual Profile(s) and some startup directives. Copy the "Thunderbird" folder to a convenient location on the new computer (Desktop?)

Install the same version of Thunderbird on the new computer as was on the old computer. When you start Thunderbird for the first time it will start to prompt you to set up an email account. Just cancel out of all of that and decline to set up an account. Exit Thunderbird

Go to the same location as above on the new computer. Copy the 'convenient' copy over the new Thunderbird folder, overwriting everything. When you next start Thunderbird, should be as they were when the old computer crashed. You might have to enter your login credentials again, since it's a new device. It will then proceed to download mail that has arrived since the backup.

When you're comfortable that things are working as you like, you can delete the 'convenient' copy.

Küsimuse postitamine

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.