Thunderbird Community Forum

After new installation I want to use my profile of the former installation. In principle I followed the procedure of the article "An einem anderen Ort wiederherstellen". After that when starting thunderbird it always asks me to create a new account.

Does anyone know what is missing?

Never could Install TBird 152 ... Found Out that Profile Bugs started with Tbird 138... Loaded Tbird 135 To Avoid Profile Bugs... Now I am getting a Strange Error Message ... Now I am getting a strange Nuisance Prompt Says I need to Create New Profile .

I have an email account that I have had for several years and I run it under Thunderbird. I have recently opened a Gmail account and understand that I can operate this under the same Thunderbird (I haven't tried it yet so expect a few glitches on the way, as per usual! There are plenty of articles covering this, so I live in hope)! Potential problem is: I have backed up my old profile account regularly and know how to do it (though I've not yet had to restore it and of course hope I never will), What worries me is that if I follow the procedure to add Gmail to my Thunderbird (and it works), will I get a single profile covering both email accounts which I will be able to back up in the way I am used to; or will I get 2 profiles including a new one for Gmail so I will need to back up both? A simple question but I haven't seen the answer anywhere yet!

John Wilson (john @wilson48.plus.com)

Trying to solve aperformance problem I tried to move my profile from C:\Users\Peter and Carol\Profiles\sjig3laj.default to "C:\Users\Profile\." -- when that did not work, I was unable tomove back to the original location, TB telling me "Local directory path ... is not suitable for message storage". How do I get back to the config that worked before ? (was just slow)

Hello. Thanks in advance. I spent a couple of long evenings deleting a few thousand sent emails from Thunderbird in order to free up some memory on my notebook computer and then intended to create a new backup profile. However, when I tried to do so using the Thunderbird Export tool an "unexpected error" occurred and I discovered that there was no longer a Thunderbird profile folder in Windows/Users/[my name]/appdata/Roaming or Local. When I used the Troubleshooting Information tool to look for the folder under Application Basics/Profile Folder, clicking on 'Open Folder' did nothing. The location is seemingly 'unavailable' for no apparent reason. Thunderbird still opens and closes normally, I can send and receive emails and all my emails are still there. I have an older backup profile stored on a removable disc, but it pre-dates the mass deletion of sent emails. My question is: if I install Thunderbird on a different PC and import this older backup profile, I presume all the emails I've just painstakingly deleted off my PC will reappear, but can Thunderbird connect to the server and download my stored emails as they were most recently saved (without the thousands of unwanted sent emails) so I can create an up-to-date profile? Thanks in advance for any advice.

I recently (unwisely) refreshed my Windows 10. I had to relaod Thunderbird, but when I tried to reinstal my previous profile, I couldn't do so. I've tried using profile manager. but it only seems to recognise two of the six or so profiles that exist in my profile folder. This means I can't access several years' worth of emails - I need to access these for invoice and work purposes. What is really frustrating is that I can see the profile I need in the profile folder, and all the emails seem to in the Mail/popmail/Inbox folder (all with a much smaller MSF. file of the same name). I've tried importing the profile into Thunderbird, but that doesn't work, it just imports the mailbox with no subfolders. A responder called David has already kindly provided advice (many thanks, David), but unfortunately the solutions haven't worked. Can anybody help?

Hey everyone

So I got a tough.

I can't log into my profiles....an unexpected error has occurred, Sometimes I get an error saying the file is in use.

I locked out all my profiles on my main computer.

Here is what happened...

Computer crashed while TB was running in the background. Upon restart TB wont start - Restart computer again - Nope Tried opening TB in safe mode - Nope No error.

So I do a clean install -- Uninstall using revo to remove ALL files Clean install and TB Opens... Install Profile - An unexpected error has prevented your changes from being saved. Install a different Profile - An unexpected error has prevented your changes from being saved. Delete all partent.lock files on all profiles.... Profiles all still - An unexpected error has prevented your changes from being saved.

Attempt to open same profile on ANOTHER computer and it opens. ONE profile however will not open on the other computer - says a file is in use

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling and once again...

An unexpected error has prevented your changes from being saved.

Lost

Thanks in advance

On T-Bird start up I'm given a list of (originally) four Profiles. Currently I only use Profile Three, but on start=up today it is not there. Doing the usual searches does not list it, only 'default', 'new user' and 'profile two'. Is there any way to recover it?

This is a follow-on to a question I asked yesterday. I appear to have accidentally deleted the main Profile I use for email. However - thinking back - I'm 99% sure I clicked the 'Don't Delete Folders' command. This supposedly deleted the Profile name BUT retained all the information in 'storage' - but where is that located?

I have been trying to transition my Comcast.net email to Yahoo email mandated by Comcast. I have been using Thunderbird as an POP account for years with the comcast.net account. When sending emails through Thunderbird, I was prompted to enter my Comcast.net password. It worked fine. With the transition to Yahoo, my email password did not allow the Yahoo email to flow thru to Thunderbird. Yahoo stated that I need a four block with spaces, and 4 digits each block, Yahoo APP System generated password. When I keyed in that APP Password, everything would flow through. one time, Next time I want receive or send and email, I needed to key in the App Password. Yahoo stated that once entered it I would not have to use their system generated APP Password. Unfortunatley there was nowhere to save that password in Thunderbird. Yahoo then told me to remove and re-enter my Yahoo Account in Thunderbird.

I deleted the old profile that was originally my profile for Comcast.net and editied to the new Yahoo details, and started reestablishing that profile with the Yahoo Incoming Mail and outgoing smtp server information, Unfortunately upon re-entering my Yahoo information I have lost of of the existing emails/folders. that I had in Thunderbird. Now what do I do to recover all of those old emails & folders?? Help! I still have to use the original email address that has been converted to Yahoo. Any way to go back to Comcast to recover the data that consituted those old emails, or are they just lost?

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 used to have Thunderbird on this laptop and was using Microsoft Office 365. I have since stopped using it from GoDaddy. I uninstalled the old Thunderbird and reinstalled a new version. I am trying to enter the new server settings but I keep getting the old Office 365 settings showing up. How do I get rid of that and find the new settings page to enter the new settings?

All my old email accounts are showing up and I only want to add 2 to the new Thunderbird. I thought uninstalling would delete all the old stuff. Please help.

After some Windows Updates installation, my computer behaved very erratically, and I had to reset it. After selecting the option to keep all files, it appears to be a joke, as I have ended up having to reinstall almost everything. Regarding Thunderbird, all the files have disappeared including the folder with the profiles, however I did a back of that folder on a separate disk and I need to know if that can be used and how to go about it.

I had to log in this morning, the first time as its automatic, and when i did all my folders and emails have gone. Where are they as there is important information in there which i need. The page layout is different too as i can't delete anything. HELP

I just installed a new router and all of a sudden nothing is working properly on my PC. Among other things, I need to fix Thunderbird, and for that I need to find where my thunderbird profile is. The instructions I've seen say to go to troubleshooting information, find profile folder, and click on "open folder." When I do that, nothing happens. (I told you installing the router appears to have broken everything--I don't know how that happened, especially since I was on the phone with tech support for the router for install), and I'm no closer to finding the profile file. I can enter %appdata%\roaming\thunderbird\profiles but that shows me two different profile directories and I don't know which one is the right one. How can I find the correct file and why doesn't troubleshooting information just show me that?

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

Thunderbird installed a new version and would not open until I created a new profile. Now all my locally saved email is missing. The only profile I can find is the new one for my email account, dated April 2026. Where is the old profile with all my saved emails? I have no email older than April 2026 in my Inbox. POP3 email, saved to my desktop computer, is gone. Please help me find them.

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.

Can I use thunderbird with multiple accounts on multiple PC's and stay synchronised?

I have two PC's i want to set up - it seems like i have to create a new account for a second PC rather than pick up the account set up from the first PC.