Thunderbird Community Forum

I deleted my Thunderbird account and created a new one on the same computer. I used a Profile saved on my external hard drive. The address book info was replicated. The hierarchy of folders and their emails were not replicated in the left hand pane. Is there a way to retrieve those folders with their content? Please, I am not super techno-savvy, so take me step by step. Thank you.

Believe my T-bird account has somehow been corrupted. Takes forever to load on PC and always puts new emails in Trash folder. Often does not accept correct password. If I save / backup PROFILE, uninstall T-Bird and delete any Thunderbird folders on PC, if I restore per backup, will I be restoring the corrupted app. Don't want to loose email addresses, thousands of emails and email folder structure. Will a restore work? Thank you. Greg D

PS Version of T-Bird on laptop still puts all new email in Trash, but loads much more quickly, etc.

I tried to transfer Thunderbird file from old computer to new computer but get "Profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessable." when I start Thunderbird. The old TB file works on old computer and I am pretty sure I copied it and pasted it into the new location in place of the current Thunderbird file.

Hello, i have installed latest TB an try to use it on one PC - This PC is part of company network, users login to windows by domain controller login. there is also a exchange server in the same network. i have created a running and working thunderbird-exchange connection for 2 different users but with the third user its noch working anymore. is there a limit to user accounts on one PC or? Thank you all kind regards andi

Hello. I recently upgraded from my older MacBook Pro (now factory reset and sold) to a new MacBook Air. I use Thunderbird as my email client and I have many folders that live within my Local Folders. When I transferred all the data from the older Mac to the new Mac via iCloud, and set up my new mail account (IMAP), the folders did not download into the program. I've tried using Subscribe but none of my pre-existing folders show up. Any assistance would be much appreciated. Thanks.

hi, I'm switching from 1 PC to another. I can download Thunderbird easily, however when I try to open, I get a popup saying profile missing. and I can't open Thunderbird. no idea what happened. any advice please? thank you! Jeff

I have my incoming IMAP emails stored on my local computer drive where the default Thunderbird installation puts it. This is fine.

My question is, can I move the local folders directory to another external drive or network attached storage? I am doing this as I have a small local SSD and combining all emails the size is massive.

I want to move my TB data store to a different drive but am unsure whether just to move the profile folder or all the other stuff like installs.ini as well. I have changed the datastore entry in settings, but do I need to modify the profiles.ini file as well, and if so what should it be changed to? At present it is in c:\users\mike\app data\roaming\thunderbird and I want it to go to D:\mail profiles. I'd be grateful for advice please. Thanks Mike Phillips

"Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible" keeps appearing mid-screen. version 147.0.1 re-installed several times (Win-10). Transfers of profile attempted from operating PC (Win-10) Cannot locate profile even in a "fresh Install" although the shortcut appears on screen and other associated files seem to be installed. Helps have been downloaded and tried. Same issue. I've received help suggestions from Lin and sfhowes both on 2-6-26.. Thanks for your help.

I recently upgraded Thunderbird from v140.7-ESR to v147-Release and would be grateful if someone could answer some questions.

After upgrading I noticed there are 3 profile folders even though I am the only user of my Win11 laptop.

Profile Folders 92yfgi88.default-esr - 3.654 GB - 2026/01/23 12:50:27 >> My profile jf63jfuk.default-default - 1.533 GB - 2024/06/05 21:27:32 y9efj7q9.default - 47 Byte - 2026/01/23 12:30:15

The folder y9efj7q9.default only contains 2 files - parent.lock (0kb) and times.json (1kb).

1. Can I safely delete profiles I don't use?

2. Why is -ESR still shown at end of my profile folder name? - I thought it would be renamed when I changed to the release channel version.

3. Can I manually rename my profile folder? - I know I can rename a profile using Profile Manager but this doesn't rename the folder.

4. If not possible to rename my "92yfgi88.default-esr" folder, I assume I can just copy it's contents to another new profile folder and tell TBird to start using that?

5. Can I use Windows File Explorer to delete/rename profiles, or must this be done from within Thunderbird?

Also, any idea why Thunderbird Notifications still show as coming from Mozilla Thunderbird ESR, even though I now use the Release version? I've checked Windows 11 System > Notifications and it is still shown there as Mozilla Thunderbird ESR.. Why? and how to fix?

Thanks in advance..

I have two personal Thunderbird accounts that were under two other email addresses on an old computer. They are [email1] @mlecwb.net and [email2] @mlecwb.net

Can I access them another way, since that computer is not working well enough to download emails? Plus the old email addresses will be disappearing with the the company l have the email addresses under.....

Then if I can get into the old messages, can I download and save some of the messages - or at least important ones in specific group files - onto another computer or a laptop? Or even on a CD?

Also, could I still use Thunderbird under another email address?

Susan Clark Harris [email3] @outlook.com

I tried to transfer my Thunderbird e-mail account to a new Laptop. I followed the instructions for using an external harddrive. I copied my profile , connected the external harddrive to the new device and filled my profile in. But actually I don't find Thunderbird e-mail in the taskbar and I can't access to it. What do I have to do?

I use Thunderbird 115.18.0 on a Windows 7 machine. I wish to transfer all my Thunderbird data to a machine running Linux Mint 21.3 which has Thunderbird 128.12.0esr. I have not been successful after many tries. Could this be because the Thunderbird revisions are different? If so, can I get 115.18.0 to install on my Mint machine? If not how should I proceed? I have already tried creating a new .thunderbird directory with ********.default directory from the other machine. I have also tried a new .thunderbird directory with a the ********default-release directory as directed by one site.

We are unable to sign in to thunderburd

using correct crudentials. We wen to geek squad to correct this issue. He installed webnet as a work around.

He said we would not lose any thunderbird emails however all the new and saved emails are no longer available to see or open. We would like you to reinstall thunderbird and restore all the lost emails. How does this get resolved?

I moved to a new PC and copied my thunderbird profile for my emails. I do not have access to my old PC at the moment. Is there any way to "log out" or disable the emails on the other PC by deleting the thunderbird profile access or similar?

I could go manually through google to log them out, but it will also remove the access on the new PC and in this situation there are a lot of accounts and the setup is a hassle.

I tried to start Thunderbird and it would not open. There was a message that read, "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." After trying to fix it and nothing worked, I uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird. Now all of my contacts and data is gone. When I tried to use the import tool I selected import from another Thunderbird installation and I can't get past the continue button.

How do I recover all of my data and contacts/addresses?