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Migrating personal folders and address books between PCs

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 16 views
  • Last reply by Wynn

BrockyTaz
BrockyTaz
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Hello, After 20+ years, I have finally begun the process of retiring my Dell Studio 1745. I have been able to set up Thunderbird on a new laptop under Windows 11 (not really happy about it but you have to do what you have to do).

I am wondering what would be the best way to move the personal folders off of the Dell and onto the new Lenovo?

I have thought about copying the Dell’s profile over to the Lenovo in a temporary area like C:\Temp and then cutting everything under the old profile over to the new one replacing all files (after backing up the new profile first of course). I’m thinking this would migrate the address books as well.

Once I have the folders and address books moved across, I will delete them from the old Dell.

Not sure if this is the best way. Any and all help/ideas/comments would be most appreciated.

Thanks and have a great day, Brocky

Hello, After 20+ years, I have finally begun the process of retiring my Dell Studio 1745. I have been able to set up Thunderbird on a new laptop under Windows 11 (not really happy about it but you have to do what you have to do). I am wondering what would be the best way to move the personal folders off of the Dell and onto the new Lenovo? I have thought about copying the Dell’s profile over to the Lenovo in a temporary area like C:\Temp and then cutting everything under the old profile over to the new one replacing all files (after backing up the new profile first of course). I’m thinking this would migrate the address books as well. Once I have the folders and address books moved across, I will delete them from the old Dell. Not sure if this is the best way. Any and all help/ideas/comments would be most appreciated. Thanks and have a great day, Brocky

All Replies (2)

Matt
Matt
  • Top 10 Contributor
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My preferred method is to open the new PC copy, use the help menu > troubleshooting to get to the troubleshooting information and then click the show profile folder button. That shows where Thunderbird thinks all your profile should be and convincing it that it is actually somewhere else appears to be getting harder

Now close the new Thunderbird.

Copy the contents of your old machine profile folder into the one that just opened including sub folders, it will replace files if you are copying everything correctly so expect warning of that nature. If you do not get then your copy is not in the right place.

Once you have done the copying start Thunderbird and it should "just work"

Helpful?

Wynn
Wynn
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My problem is similar, but not exactly the same. Been using Thunderbird for at least 10 years on a Windows 10.

My Windows 10 machine crashed early September. A man with the service, rescued my data to a HDD, which I have now.

I now have a Windows 11, Lenovo.

After installing a new Thunderbird, I've used the instructions on the Thunderbird Help page "How do I find my profile?" to find the location of the Profile on the W10 machine on the HDD. And the new Thunderbird (v143.0.1) on the new Win 11.

There are two sub-folders in the Profiles folder. (8alph/num).default (8alph/num).default.release Both were created on 4 Oct 2025, 10.21 for the first, 10.45 the second.

I'm thinking that Matt's approach as per the 4/23/25 response will reveal the "correct" one. Will it?

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