Thunderbird 커뮤니티 포럼

dear support, plese help me, i accidentally remove message data when i want to move email to another laptop. usually if mesage data in local D, the checkbox will greyed but it grey and checked what should i do. i already use recovery software but inbox & sent file won't recover, only archive like 2025 & 2025.msf and it can't be oppened, message still empty although capacity of that file 3GB. any help will really appreciate.

I've been using Thunderbird for several years, but I still don't quite understand how it works. A week ago or so I was unable to add attachments to email and it was suggested to me that I should reinstall Thunderbird, and the claim was made that I would lose neither my email nor the settings. So I did reinstall Thunderbird and found out that all my Local Folders were gone and that I had to configure all my email accounts from scratch, which I did.

Since I regularly back up my home directory using the Ubuntu Backups app, I thought I could restore my Thunderbird data from a recent back-up. Following some advice I'd found on the internet, I restored the ~/.thunderbird directory from a recent backup and saved it at the desktop. Then I replaced the current ~/.thunderbird directory with the one restored from the back-up (cp -r ~/Desktop/.thunderbird/ ~/). When I re-launched Thunderbird, I noticed the following: (1) All the Local Folders that I had created in 2024 and before were restored, but not the more recent ones (i.e, the ones created in 2025 and 2026). (2) The restored Local Folders did not contain any emails dated after early September 2024, which I think is the time when I upgraded Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04. Looking at the restored profile directory (~/Desktop/.thunderbird/cvb2eouj.default-release/Mail/Local\ Folders), I see that the missing Local Folders are not there, which makes me believe that the problem happened at the stage of making a back-up of my home directory rather than during the restoration process. Is it possible that the location of Thunderbird data moved from ~/.thunderbird elsewhere at the time when the transition to the snap version of Thunderbird took place in Ubuntu 24.04? If so, what is the new location? Knowing the names of some of the missing Local Folders, I have tried to search for them in my home directory, but found none (find /home/<user name>/ -name <name of a missing Local Folder> -print).

I also wonder whether I could use backup data that were created at the time when I uninstalled whatever version of Thunderbird I had prior to clean installation of Thunderbird 157.0. I recall that uninstallation took a lot of time because a back-up was being created (sudo snap remove thunderbird). I have no idea where that back-up was saved, however.

So now I have Thunderbird 157.0 installed and configured on Ubuntu 26.04, I can send and receive e-mail in all my accounts, but Local Folders created after September 2024 are missing, and the ones that exist contain only relatively old emails (older than September 2024).

I would appreciate help and ideas on how to restore the missing Local Directories and emails from home directory backups.

I use POP. I download and keep all my messages received and sent, and have the server delete after a set period. However after installing Thunderbird I've noticed my sent folder is only 6 months old. It should be 15 years! What has Thunderbird done with my messages and can I get them back?

I changed POP3 email password to an app password and Thunderbird would not recognize it even though I updated in Security. I was told to delete the Thunderbird account then set it back up which I did--I did not check the box to delete files. Finally the new account was able to bring in new emails (POP3) but the old folders/emails are not there.

I read that I should go to %appdata%, roaming, Thunderbird but the dates are from years ago--do I go further to find my data or is there another path or something else I should do?

Unless they were backed up somewhere within Thunderbird, I don't think I have any backup.

Can you please help? Thank you.

Hello,

Is there a method to export my emails in EML format instead of Mbox without using third-party software? Are there any settings in the configuration editor that could change the default Mbox format?

Thank you

Hi, I am trying to import all my emails from Yahoo to GMX and would appreciate your guidance on how to successfully complete this process. I have an existing account with both Yahoo and GMX. I have attempted to use the GMX import feature but have encountered some issues. It would be helpful to understand if there are specific steps or settings I need to follow to ensure a smooth transfer of my emails. Additionally, if there are any limitations or troubleshooting tips that I should be aware of, I would love to hear them. Thank you for your assistance.

What do I have to do to get help in this Forum? This is the second time I've posted a Question seeking help, and yet again it is being ignored. Do I have join some secret clique or group? If so please tell me?

Due to issues with upgrading from Ubuntu 24.04.1 to 26.04.1, I decided to just start from scratch with a new clean install.

After finalising the install, I copied across my Thunderbird data to the new partition, merging directories as the data copied across. But, somewhere in the transfer I lost about the last two years emails, with only emails up until 12/24 being available.

There are a lot a important emails I need to recover, and I'm guessing they're still on my PC, in the old partition, and I desperately need help to recover them.

My mail filesa re huge like 26GB. So I do the copy/paste type transfer for backup. I've done it for years. Today I get this (see attachment) at the end of the "paste" into a backup folder. I hit "skip" Is this an issue? Earlier I did accidentally hit the auto export (zip) b4 reverting to manual

So by skipping this is this going to break my backup so it isn't useable?

Thanks, Jeff K.

My email was rossmann@telkomsa.net My husband died on 25 May 2023 and telkom closed his account. I opened a gmail account. I am now wanting to open a few emails from 2022 regarding contracts but Thunderbird obviously only has my old email. Please could you assist me Kind regards, Chrissie Rossmann

/storage/emulated/0/Download/takeout-20260225T235023Z-14-001 (1)/Takeout/Mail/All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox

Thunderbird Mail Accounts Not Imported from 5 GB Backup

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to restore my Thunderbird setup from a 5 GB backup/export file.

Thunderbird already recommended that I manually extract the backup file and then import the extracted folder. I followed these instructions, but after importing the folder, none of my mail accounts are restored.

The backup file is about 5 GB in size, so I assume the data is there, but Thunderbird does not recognize or restore the email accounts.

Has anyone experienced this issue? How can I properly restore the mail accounts and their emails from this backup?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello, I retired in June. I asked my employer to allow me to archive my emails before they deactivated my work account. The Director of IT has been very helpful in recommending various apps that can do that. One was enormously expensive. One archived all my emails together (29K) and it is very difficult to locate one separately. The IT Director has also recommended Thunderbird. I have downloaded it but am having difficulty using it. I have saved all my emails using Google Takeout and the emails are saved in an mbox format. If you could help me get started with making sure the Thunderbird default settings are correct, placing the emails into Thunderbird and showing me how to access certain emails (and delete ones I don't need to save), I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you, Susan Hook

Greetings,

I perform a daily thumb drive backup of Thunderbird in the event that my PC crashes (which it has) so I don't loose emails and contacts. I'm aware of two methods to do this. I've tried both, and one method saves more file folders than the other. My question is: Which is correct to use?

One method is described here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export The other method is accessed from the main page of Thunderbird: Import/Export > Backup, select OK and then the location and folder where you want the data to be transferred.

The first method captures four main folders and other files listed below them. The second method captures ten folders and all of the same files as in the first method.

Because they are different, I'm unsure of which to use and, additionally, why would two methods be offered?

Thank you in advance for your comments and advice.

Hello, I am hoping someone can kindly help me. In the process of copying folders from POP to IMAP in order to make my account accessible on my new Andriod IPad, my sub folders disappeared the next the day on my POP account. I had not yet started to copy sub folders to IMap. I cannot find them in the Trash and I fear I may have deleted anyway. Is there anyway I can find these missing folders? I am sure I did not delete anything except maybe Trash emails. Thank you for any help Martyn

System:

Win 11 Home (lastest updates, also my notebook's latest updates from the manufacturer) Thunderbird version 151.0

Okay, this is a multiple clusterf#@$.

I ended up needing to do a Win 11 Home "reset" keeping data. But I needed to back up some files first. But my back up drive was full. Usually, it's because of EaseUs ToDo not deleting files and just adding and adding to the system backup. But that wasn't the main issue: my Thunderbird profile (which I backup separately) was about 280 GIGABYTES in size! This is an extension of a prior problem for which nobody on here new how to solve and certainly nobody from Mozilla chimed in to help. So I did what I'd done before (but it'd never been like this) and delected a couple of THOUSAND seemingly redundant iterations of files from my profile, but NONE of the folders inside the profile.

Of course the Win11 reset deleted Thunderbird and all the profile information. No big problem, I've done this before...but it didn't work copying in all of the old files (from my backup drive) into a new profile and selecting that profile to boot. So, I went to the "Recycle Bin", undeleted all of those files back into my backed-up profile. But I'm only able to get Thunderbird to see all of my address book information. It is not finding my Thunderbird and email account settings nor my email messages (21 years worth). I 100% did NOT delete my email messages (c:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\PROFILENAME\Mail).

I can laboriously redo my email account information (five different accounts) and Thunderbird user settings, but I really DESPERATELY NEED HELP restoring my email messages.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!

I'm moving from Windows to Mac. I exported my Profile from the Windows setup to a ZIP. The import to the Mac seemed to go smoothly but the result is I got all my custom headings I'd nested under Inbox (etc.) but none of the contents. The ZIP is well over 1 gig in size so clearly the export caught all but none of the contents imported. '

For example, under Inbox I created a Heading named Receipts that was populated by receipts from purchases. The import added that heading but none of the emails under that Heading.

I tried simply copying the Profile file from the Windows profile folder to the Mac profile folder but that clearly did not work.

I'm on the edge of desperation here. I'd greatly appreciate any and all help.

In reference to the article [[Knowledge Base Article|http://mzl.la/1ApHiU3]], "Move Thunderbird data to a new computer", this misses the transfer of Local Folders.

The instructions only include moving the Thunderbird application data folder with profile information but does not include Local Folders, after completing these instructions the Local Folders will not be present on the new computer.

The path for Local Folders is under Account Settings > Local Folders, this folder needs to be copied to the similar path on the new computer as well.

I have copied emails from a Windows 10 to Windows 11 computer using these instructions and it appears to work.

I asked this question on Google and the AI answer although sounding logical and easy did not work.

I have a number of saved emails that I would like to add to my local folders. Any help will be appreciated.

I am moving the host of my email domain to a different provider and I want to protect my historical emails. I have set up the emails as POP3 so I should have all the emails on my PC, but in the past when I transferred my business email to a new host I didn't back up the database. So, when I put the new email host settings into outlook, it over-wrote the database and all my historical emails were wiped, and it turned out that my back up and archive pst files were both corrupted so couldn't restore them ( I have since managed to retrieve everything but it was a long process I don't want to go through again if I can help it). So I'd like to know where the database is stored so I can duplicate it first. Any help would be appreciated.