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Restore profile to new Thunderbird

  • 2 replies
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  • Last reply by Tom.w

Tom.w
Tom.w
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I had to refresh the OS on my Ubuntu machine and thus lost my Thunderbird application but my home directory is intact and my previous profile (containing multiple mail accounts) is present. When I reinstalled Thunderbird it starts with all settings blank. How can I point to my existing profile without rebuilding all the account information from scratch?

I had to refresh the OS on my Ubuntu machine and thus lost my Thunderbird application but my home directory is intact and my previous profile (containing multiple mail accounts) is present. When I reinstalled Thunderbird it starts with all settings blank. How can I point to my existing profile without rebuilding all the account information from scratch?

Chosen solution

If the prior profile is still intact, just ignore the prompt for new email, click the 'home' tab and then rightclick near top and activate the 'menu bar' and then click help>moretroubleshootinginformation, scroll down to Profiles and click 'about:profiles' - and your profile should be visible.

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david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

If the prior profile is still intact, just ignore the prompt for new email, click the 'home' tab and then rightclick near top and activate the 'menu bar' and then click help>moretroubleshootinginformation, scroll down to Profiles and click 'about:profiles' - and your profile should be visible.

Tom.w
Tom.w Question owner
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A bit of additional info for others in a similar situation. Following David's instructions I was unable to see my old profile in TB despite seeing it in the same folder in file manager. I then created a new profile from "help>moretroubleshootinginformation" "Profiles" and "about:profiles", and noted the profile name created by TB. This new profile is essentially "blank". I closed TB and copied all files/folders from my old profile into the newly created one overwriting the only files there. When I opened TB it went to the "new" profile as default and all my old accounts & mails are present. A bit round about but so far all seems to function correctly so I don't argue w success.