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After moving profile, many emails are missing

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  • Last reply by Matt

Richard
Richard
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I have an ongoing issue with drive space, which I am trying to solve. My computer is a Dell Latitude 3540 laptop running Win10 Pro 21H1. I upgraded the HD to a Crucial 480 GB SSD and partitioned it as C: and E:. It's worked very well for many years. Recently the C: partition (223 GB) has become nearly full (<10 GB left). I have moved all documents, videos etc. to E:. I have left the Insider program hoping that some associated setup files could be removed or uninstalled.

I discovered that my TB profile was over 3 GB so I decided to move it to E:. I found some instructions on this site. I created a folder structure E:\Users\Richard\Thunderbird\Profiles and moved the single profile folder from %appdata%, changing the path statement in profiles.ini to point to the new location. However, when I restarted TB it couldn't find the profile.

I tried using the Profile Manager and Create Profile, pointing to the folder on E:. I now have my account and my wife's account set up using the automatic detection of server settings, and each account has the recent emails in the Inbox. They are both IMAP. I have archive folders for 2020 and 2019, which are populated.

Before moving the profile I had emails saved in various folders in Local Folders but these haven't been restored. Message filters moved certain emails from my Inbox into subfolders in Local Folders but these filters are not restored. I discovered that this practice prevented me from seeing those emails using the Gmail app on both our phones so I had begun to move them back into account folders so they can be synced.

profiles.ini now contains details of two profiles: [Profile1] Name=Default IsRelative=0 Path=E:\Users\Richard\Thunderbird

[Profile0] Name=shomogxf.default IsRelative=1 Path=e:/users/Richard/Thunderbird/Profiles/shomogxf.default Default=1

Thanks for reading this far !

I have an ongoing issue with drive space, which I am trying to solve. My computer is a Dell Latitude 3540 laptop running Win10 Pro 21H1. I upgraded the HD to a Crucial 480 GB SSD and partitioned it as C: and E:. It's worked very well for many years. Recently the C: partition (223 GB) has become nearly full (<10 GB left). I have moved all documents, videos etc. to E:. I have left the Insider program hoping that some associated setup files could be removed or uninstalled. I discovered that my TB profile was over 3 GB so I decided to move it to E:. I found some instructions on this site. I created a folder structure E:\Users\Richard\Thunderbird\Profiles and moved the single profile folder from %appdata%, changing the path statement in profiles.ini to point to the new location. However, when I restarted TB it couldn't find the profile. I tried using the Profile Manager and Create Profile, pointing to the folder on E:. I now have my account and my wife's account set up using the automatic detection of server settings, and each account has the recent emails in the Inbox. They are both IMAP. I have archive folders for 2020 and 2019, which are populated. Before moving the profile I had emails saved in various folders in Local Folders but these haven't been restored. Message filters moved certain emails from my Inbox into subfolders in Local Folders but these filters are not restored. I discovered that this practice prevented me from seeing those emails using the Gmail app on both our phones so I had begun to move them back into account folders so they can be synced. profiles.ini now contains details of two profiles: [Profile1] Name=Default IsRelative=0 Path=E:\Users\Richard\Thunderbird [Profile0] Name=shomogxf.default IsRelative=1 Path=e:/users/Richard/Thunderbird/Profiles/shomogxf.default Default=1 Thanks for reading this far !

All Replies (3)

AgnesRM
AgnesRM
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Hi IMAP shows you only what is on the server, Local Folders are literally local - only stored on your local drive, removed from the online server, therefore not visible in webmail. If you had a storage issue, keeping a lot in Local Folders probably added to that. With IMAP you can set Thunderbird to show only the headings and not download a message until you open it. That means the online server is doing all the storage for you. So those filters were counter-productive and returning the emails to synced folders was a good move in your case. Provided that you have IMAP, you can put Thunderbird profile in any safe location, but if you have Local Folders you do need the correct profile to load. If you can view appdata on the old drive, you should be able to confirm the profile size, compared with the profiles in your new drive. At least that would confirm nothing is lost. If you did truly Move not Copy, then work with what you have. Rather than editing profiles.ini, I would suggest that you put the files where Thunderbird is looking. Copy everything in the profile that has a large file size to the profile that Thunderbird is actually using. Good luck! ;-)

Richard
Richard Question owner
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Thanks @AgnesRM. Today when I opened TB I saw the message "Your TB profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I ran the profilemanager and it says there are two profiles: shomogxf and default, but TB won't load either. The Thunderbird Profiles folder in AppData in the original location is largely empty and there's nothing large enough to be a profile. The new location contains a lot of folders, looking more like a TB installation, but no profile folder. Do I have to create a new one? I did this before, but where is it now? I can still see emails on my phone's Gmail app, so thankfully there's still data on the server. But getting TB to load it is proving frustrating. It all worked seamlessly and I've screwed it up!

Richard

Matt
Matt
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Your first mistake (I am old enough to remember when 100mb drive was going to store a lifetimes data.) was in partitioning the SSD drive in the first place. Windows is greedy and assumes everything is on the system volume. But there is nothing you can do about that now and it is not really germaine to the problem at hand.

As for the profile stuff, forget you have ever heard of the profiles.ini file. If you made a backup, replace the one you have with the original would be a good idea.

  1. Now you copied the entries profile structure you say from appdata to e:/users/Richard/Thunderbird/Profiles. What that the folder shomogxf.default?
  2. So the profile you want to use should be located in e:/users/Richard/Thunderbird/Profiles/shomogxf.default Is that correct?
  3. So lets look as what you copied. if you right click e:/users/Richard/Thunderbird/Profiles/shomogxf.default and select properties and wait for windows to update the dialog. How many files and folders does it say it contains? No do it for the original folder in %appdata% are the number the same?
  4. I just noticed you moved... oops still how many files and folder in the profile folder?
  5. Does the information you moved contain a folders "mail" and "imapmail"?