Thunderbird Community Forum

I'm changing email servers and need the best way to automatically backup my complete(multiple domains and user accounts) emails in thunderbird to a separate drive or local machine before changing servers. I would prefer an automated way to do this so I can continue to update backup file routinely

I already back up my profile regularly to a remote drive

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

I use easeus backup to save my thunderbird email profiles and i hope emails. I want to find a single email within the backup. I can access a dated backup no problem. issue is how do i read the thunderbird files... in folder profiles... to pop.gmail folder, where i hope the emails actually reside.

Thunderbird was running on a laptop that has become suspect. Copied the files to a desktop machine. Tried to access these file from the app on the laptop. Only new message are available. All old inbox, sent, other folders, trash, etc. are missing. Tried to go back to the laptop files, but the results are the same.

Running Windows 11 on both machines.

Is there any way to get my data back?

Thanks, Robert

I upgraded from windows 10 to 11 My son was able to recover my e-mail folders, but some large folders are missing and the remainder only have e-mails from 2019 or earlier. How do I recover those e-mails? I am no longer conversant with the current technology or terminology. I need simplistic instructions.

My old Arch Linux system with Thunderbird 145.0-1-x86_64 died. My RasPi and my new Pop-OS Meerkat both get 140.7.1esr (aarch64), and say they can't import my backups. I could see the RasPi ARM system getting a different Thunderbird, but the Meerkat is clearly an Intel processor. Why does it get the same version as the ARM based Pi? How can I recover my years of mail history? Both new installations say they are incompatible!

I recently booted up a new installation of Thunderbird on a new laptop running Fedora Linux after my old Laptop running Ubuntu died. Fortunately, I had been regularly backing up the old machine with Deja Dup. I restored all my files from a recent backup. All my files seem to have been successfully recovered except that many locally-stored Thunderbird messages are missing, and some local folder names have been corrupted.

Since I see problems only with Thunderbird, I suspect the problem lies there rather than with Deja Dup.

Has anyone else had problems with restoring Thunderbird from backups? Is there something I might try to recover the missing messages and corrupted folders? Should I be using a different backup in the future?

Hi, I have used "takeout" years before but not one of these.

https://www.google.com/search?q=download+Gmail+MBOX+viewer+tool&oq=download+Gmail+MBOX+viewer+tool&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgYIABBFGDkyBggAEEUYOdIBCTE5NzE5ajBqMagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Can I keep folder integrity using one of these? And how if not obvious.

Quota is high.

Thanks

I was using a web mail client and it deleted my inbox. I have a backup of Inbox and Inbox.msf file on my local computer and keep copying it into the correct folder, but every time I start Thunderbird, it syncs from the server down and deletes all the messages in my inbox file.

How do I tell it to sync the local messages back up to the server or is there a good/better way to do it?

Is it possible to copy just the Mail folder from a Thunderbird Profile backup in Time Machine on Mac? I have deleted an email account from Thunderbird and I did not tick Delete Data so the emails are still there in my Profile but they no longer show up in the tree in Thunderbird on my Mac ( OS 14.8 Sonoma). I had a lot of subfolders into which I had put incoming and sent emails on particular topics. For example I had a folder called Family, and inside that I had a subfolder called Birthdays as well as many other family related topics. My last Time Machine back up is about a month ago but that would be good enough to restore from. I tried ‘Import’ in Thunderbird but it only imported the main folders and the emails within but not the subfolders. I have another email address besides the deleted one and if I overwrite the whole Profile with the older one from Time Machine it will lose a lot of new stuff accumulated since that backup. Any help most appreciated

Bonjour, J'ai Thunderbird depuis très longtemps et j'ai toujours pris l'habitude de stocker tous mes mails dans le répertoire "Dossiers locaux" qui se trouvait toujours sur un HDD différent de celui ou était installé Thunderbird. A chaque nouvelle installation de Thunderbird, je renseignais le chemin ou était stocké "Dossiers Locaux" et hop en 30s, j'avais tous mes messages archivés depuis des années. Je viens de changer de version de Ubuntu (24.04.3 LTS) et la nouveau Thunderbird (140.7.1 esr), donc comme d'habitude je renseigne le chemin de mon répertoire local "Dossiers Locaux" mais rien ne remonte dans Thunderbird ? J'ai essayé (bidouillé) plein de petits trucs sans succès et je ne m'en sort pas ! Pouvez-vous svp me renseigner ?

I've (finally!) managed to set up a new account on my new PC (having found the required password, a long string of letters - where did that come from? - I would certainly never have chosen that and I was never informed of it). I also successfully managed to transfer my Profile from the old PC to the new one (thanks to your helpful article. However, While I have thousands of 'sent' messages I only have a few in my inbox and sub-folders (i.e. today's). (I originally used the recommended server settings (?IMAP) I was offered but then changed to SMTP/POP which is what I always used before without problems.) So - I go to 'Import from a Thunderbird profile' and it shows me the Profile Name and Directory details, but then says 'Nothing can be imported from the selected source' - but doesn't tell me why not, nor what I should do about it! Given the Profile has transferred successfully, why can't it be accessed? Any ideas appreciated. Thanks, David Collins.

Purchased new laptop. Used export tool in Thunderbird to external HD. Traded in old laptop. Installed Thunderbird & attempted to import my email profile. Import tool requires zip file, but the only file on my external HD is a .default file. I'm getting new email but none of my old emails. Consulted Best Buy Geek & he determined the import tool didn't work properly because the export was missing required files. We further determined the export backup must not have worked properly.

How do I restore selected emails or folders from a backup made with Export? I only want to bring in 30 or so (which were accidentally deleted). I'm using a Windows 11 PC.

I'm nervous about reloading the backup because it was some time ago (and I *really* don't want it to download new emails).

I am losing my Mediacom ISP account (which I have had for 20 years) at the end of this month. I have used Mediacoms web mail server all this time and want to keep many emails and addresses that are on their server. I was told that Thunderbird would allow me to transfer/copy these messages to my computer and retain them there in Thunderbird after I no longer have access to Mediacoms server. I have installed Thunderbird 3 times and spent 2-3 days with help from this forum trying to gt it to work properly but have not succeeded. I have a windows 10 HP laptop and am not completely computer literate so I don't believe I will solve this by myself. I even loaded up an old windows 7 computer which I did with ver 15. but that didn't work either. THe one difference I did notice is that the Tbird auto installation on my Win 10 machine selects POP and on the Win 7 machine it selects IMAP. Mediacom is uses IMAP

I have followed the directions at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer#thunderbird:mac:tb146 several times but only one acct is transferred and NO local folders. I am going from Thunderbird 146.0.1 on a Windows 11 PC to a Mac Mini M4 running Sequoia 15.3.1

Help

How do I ensure that archived messages go onto my local computer and are removed from my e-mail account on the cloud? (I use CPANEL with a strict limit on space.)