error on trying to set local directory in Thunderbird
I'm having trouble trying to set my local directory in Thunderbird back to what it was before I messed up.
I stuffed up changing the local directory in Account Settings to point somewhere else, so I tried to point it back to where it was before. I also put back the copy I had made of the original profile- now it says-
"The Local Directory path "C:\Users\vk7krj\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\1vgo1xlc.default-esr" is not suitable for message storage. Please choose another directory."
Yet I'm sure this was where it was pointing before I messed things up- what am I doing wrong?
I have over 20 years of emails and addresses on the line now so I am really hoping someone can help me get myself out of the mess I appear to have created.
Ken.
All Replies (9)
Further to my problem, I now have both my email accounts working, the remaining problem is my Local Folders tree is empty. There should be a couple of hundred folders in there- none are showing, just a Trash & an Outbox folder. When I look in the two current profile folders, looking at the respective folder tree .json files, I can see all the folder names there, but they are not showing up in Thunderbird. I tried restarting the program but it made no difference. So two steps forward, one step back!
Any help greatly appreciated.
Ken.
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Thanks for the reply Sanjay, but I think you might be misunderstanding me- there are no web pages involved, the problem is with my Thunderbird email client on my win10 machine.
Ken.
The local directory is where local folders are stored. You must refer to the local folders directory in your profile. You are now referring to the root directory of your profile.
Thanks Rick, I looked in the directory of the profile I am using and there isn't a local folders directory. There is a folderCache.json and a folderTree.json, and looking in them I can see the names of all the missing folders. So now I am wondering if I am missing the actual folder you refer to- perhaps it got missed out when I backed up the profile?
Ken.
No, the only folder in "Mail" is one named "smart mailboxes". However, your reply sent me hunting in the hard drive from the pc before this one where I found the Local Folders folder which contained most of what I wanted. So I shut down Thunderbird, copied the old Local Folders to my current profile folder- but when I fired up Thunderbird it made no difference! So I confirmed that in my default profile folder I now had Mail/Local Folders and that Local Folders had 3 folders called Inbox.sbd, My People.sbd and Other Stuff.sbd, and three .msf files with the same names, all with the saved content that I wanted.
There's also folderCache.json and folderTree.json in the default-esr folder, also containing the information I want.
But still nothing of what I am looking for shows up in the folder tree when I run Thunderbird! I must be missing something obvious here, but I don't know what!
Ken.
Have you specified that directory in Thunderbird?
Are mbox files inside the sbd folders? They should be named "Inbox", "My People", and "Other Stuff" without extensions.
I do not know why Thunderbird sometimes does not recognize mbox files in a profile.
If I had only three mbox files to deal with, I would:
- Close Thunderbird.
- Back up those mbox files.
- Move those mbox files from the "Local Folders" directory to a temporary location such as the desktop.
- Empty the "Local Folders" directory in my profile.
- Open Thunderbird.
- Install the ImportExporTools NG add-on.
- Make sure that the local folders account exists in Thunderbird.
- Use ImportExportTools NG to import each mbox file into the local folders account.
Other people may know more and have other/better ideas.
You found the answer for me Rick- when I looked at the mbox files, they were all there- but empty! All were zero bytes.
And worse, looking at all my backups, the mbox files are all zero byte files too.
Not sure why this is, but it seems I am well and truly screwed as far as getting my local folders back.
So many thanks for your help, it was greatly appreciated.
Ken.
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