Thunderbird Community Forum

Hi I am an older person and have lost my profiles on thunderbird email - one is [redacted]@xtra.co.nz and the other is [redacted]@xtra.co.nz. We are in NZ and accidently deleted the Thunderbird profile and not the corrupted new profile I was setting up. Thank you. Gloria Sandbrook. I still have [redacted]@xtra.co.nz on my phone for communication. Cheers.

I have posted another question about my corrupted TB profile and restoring it. Having done the restore and looked through the profile folder it is clear that this is full of old files that are no longer supported/needed.

Is there a utility that removes these old files?

I'm not sure if TB updates should remove them but it doesn't appear to have done so.

When I read https://kb.mozillazine.org/Files_and_folders_in_the_profile_-_Thunderbird it is clear that there are so many of these that doing it manually would be prone to error. That resource also says it does not know what some of the files actually do.

Is there a better resource that lists just the latest files maintained by Mozilla?

If I do a new export does it only export the files it needs? The last time I ran an export the resulting zip did not contain all the files from the TB installation but I have no idea why.

I have copied Thunderbird folder from C:users\maris\AppData\roaming on old PC. Had it working on the new PC, but it suffered an unrecoverable error during a windows update after only five days. Other reinstalled apps now running OK, but have been unable to replicate the successful installation from a few days ago. Found additional profiles in profiles.ini and deleted them. Made no difference!

I have moved my Thunderbird data from drive C:\xxx\Thunderbird to N:\xxx\Thunderbird. The Thunderbird program remains on "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird" How do I tell Thunderbird to find its data on the N: drive?

     Thank you,    Art Lieberman

I am using Thunderbird 140.15.0esr and have noticed that my Ashampoo Backup is not able to store my Thunderbirs files any more. I have looked up how to find the Thunderbird files and the posts mainly say :

C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\

But when I follow this path there is no Thunderbird folder in Roaming as shown in the attached screen shot

Can you help please.

Ian Hulley

Hi, I have multiple profiles on my computer. How do I make sure all emails on the older profiles is on my profile I am now using? I would like to delete old profile 16+gb but want to make sure all emails are in the profile I am presently using. I think all emails are in present profile but would like to make sure. I have other older profiles but they are small in size. Trying to recover some disk space on my ssd.

bonjour, J'ai installé un nouveau profil, mais j'arrive pas a utiliser l'icone -sélectionner messages à droite au dessus des mails- appliquer ces paramètres/la vue... Ca me serai utile pour simplifier et unifier mes affichages. Actuellement j'observe aucune changement, bug ou erreur de manip.

Helping a friend with her HP-i3 PC running Windows 11 that I setup in March of 2025. It was a new PC purchased from BestBuy in March 2025.

I had to restore the image backup of her C drive that I did in March 2025 because of a Windows problem that I wasn't able to resolve. Now that problem is resolved but Tbird has the old profile folder without her new email contacts. (Unfortunately, I did not remember to use Tbird to save a backup of her profile folder before doing the restore.)

She has a recent image backup so I can extract Tbird's profile folder from that backup. What would be the correct procedure to replace the current profile folder with the one extracted from the recent backup?

(don't currently have access to her PC so don't know the version number of Tbird currently installed)

I installed Thunderbird on my new laptop, then imported the profile from my old laptop

The main screen has, under "Inbox", folders for Drafts, Sent, Trash, Archive and Spam, which are being used by the program

Folders for Drafts, Sent and Trash also appear under "Local Folders" (along with Outbox) and these aren't being used by the program.

How do I get rid of these duplicate folders? "Spam" had a delete option, so that was easy, but the others don't.

I tried the two suggestions for a previous "Duplicates" question but they didn't resolve things.

Thank you

Copilot has prepared a message for me: Subject: Thunderbird always loads corrupted profile and ignores new profiles

Message:

Thunderbird is stuck loading the same corrupted profile and always shows the welcome screen, even when I create new profiles.

I used the Profile Manager via thunderbird.exe -p and created new profiles (“Clean” and “Clean2”). Both profile folders exist in %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles. However, Thunderbird still launches the same original profile every time.

Even when I select “Clean2” in the Profile Manager (with “Use the selected profile without asking” unchecked), Thunderbird ignores the selection and loads the old profile. Safe Mode (thunderbird.exe -safe-mode) also does not disable the welcome module.

This appears to be a profiles.ini corruption or a profile lock issue, because Thunderbird is not switching profiles even though the Profile Manager shows the correct selection.

Could you advise how to repair or reset the profile configuration so Thunderbird will actually load a new profile?

Thank you.

I have a previous Thunderbird account, which resides on another computer. On my current Desktop, I downloaded Thunderbird, went to open and it says "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I went this route because my original Thunderbird has many customized Files to which I put emails into. I can't figure out how to recreate that profile as your instructions are quite impossible to follow. Remember, most of your users are like me, a bit under the standard as far as programming skills. So, how do I get either: my original profile to be imported to my new computer, or, better, just open my new Thunderbird so I can use a different, newer set of email addresses? This is my preference. Please advise.

I'm getting frequent popup messages from McAfee, my email threat detector, that they've detected and stopped a threat, but none is identified. McAfee's chatbot wants me to create a new profile and add my email accounts to that profile. Will I lose access to all my currently saved email messages and calendar information?

I have followed the instructions that several people give to transfer my existing Thunderbird installation to a new computer where I have just installed Thunderbird. That is I copied the Thunderbird folder and put it in the Roaming folded found in %appdata%. Both computers are on Windows 11. When I open the new Thunderbird, it does not recognise it. Furthermore, in Help>Troubleshooting information>Profile folder when I click to open the folder, it looks for a folder that is not in my previous Thunderbird installation: qr19mupe.default-release instead of the one that came with my imported Thunderbird folder. Has this happened to anybody and found the solution? Can anybody help please?

My Thunderbird was working fine today, all messages received, could send/receive email and all parts of my profile that I had set up (ie custom archive folders) were present and had emails.. I did a Windows update and when I reopened Thunderbird there was a pop up prompting me to login to my yahoo email. I did so and now everything is gone, all folders are empty - no emails and none of the unique folders I had created. The only thing that I can tell is still present is my address book. I am also unable to send or receive emails. When I try to send an email (to myself or anyone else) I get a pop-up "The mail server responded: Request failed; Mailbox unavailable. Please verify that your email address is correct in your account settings." I checked and the email listed is correct, the one I have been using my entire life. I also checked my Server Settings and they appear to be correct. (I have a cox.net email address which I transitioned to yahoo several years ago as instructed by Cox, as Cox no longer supports email - everything has been working perfectly until today) I also see there was a Thunderbird update done at 5:53PM today which would have been the same time I did the windows update (Thunderbird 153.0.3esr). I sent an email to myself from my yahoo website email and it never arrived in my Thunderbird Inbox but it DOES show in my Thunderbird "Sent" folder. I do have a Thunderbird backup ZIP file but unfortunately it is about a year old so obviously won't have some stuff I would not like to lose. Thoughts?????

Hello

I use Thunderbird for many years, I have a profile weighing 3,6 GB now… I already moved this profile on my old computer, from default location to a data disk. Now I needed to move it to a new computer, so I moved it to my Dropbox (with local storage on both), to conveniently access it from the new machine, and to have some kind of backup (with a real backup, more occasional, of course). I don't plan to launch Thunderbird from both computers, so there should be no conflict.

I installed a fresh new download of Thunderbird (152), which I just upgraded to 153. The new computer runs Windows 11 Professional (build 26200.8875), has 32 GB of memory and a large amount of free disk space.

My profile.ini file currently looks like: ``` [Install734AE0B000379192] Default=C:\Dropbox\Applications\Thunderbird\0q9jw2nn.default Locked=1

[Profile1] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/ncc2rvps.default

[Profile0] Name=default-release IsRelative=0 Path=Profiles/30jrlwud.default-release

[General] StartWithLastProfile=0 Version=2

[Profile2] Name=PhiLho IsRelative=0 Path=C:\Dropbox\Applications\Thunderbird\0q9jw2nn.default Default=1 ``` Profile 0 and 1 were created at installation time. I added the Profile2 and I set StartWithLastProfile to 0 to ensure the profile manager sees the profile.

When I start Thunderbird, after choosing the PhiLho profile, I end up with an empty window: no accounts, no messages, no folders, etc. I see no relevant error in the developer console, or the logs. What I am missing?

I'm asking this question so I can post some helpful information for people wanting to create a backup of their profile.

If you are using Windows OS and you got your download from the official website: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/

How do you locate the correct folder to backup? The backup must contain everything, profiles, mail accounts, emails, address books, calendar, preferences - the lot. The backup can be used to transfer between computers.

My current Thunderbird profile has been created dirctly in ...AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird. <Profiles> does exist but not contain any recent files or data. How do I restore a proper data structure without losing any emails, settings or other data?

The screenshot shows the present structure

My Windows 11 was recently reinstalled to factory settings, which uninstalled Thunderbird but saved my mobx files. I used Thunderbird exclusively to view older emails that are stored on my PC as mobx files. I do not use Thunderbird as an active email client. I reinstalled Thunderbird, but have been unable to get it to find my mobx files that are stored together in a folder.

I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird for many years without any issues.

A few minutes ago, I used Thunderbird as usual and then closed it. When I tried to open it again, it would not respond. I restarted my Windows 11 laptop, but after rebooting, Thunderbird opened as if it were a fresh installation. None of my email accounts, settings, or data are there.

I signed in to one of my email accounts, hoping Thunderbird would automatically recover my previous accounts and settings, but nothing happened.

I am using Windows 11 and Thunderbird version 140.13.0 (64-bit).

Could you please help me recover my existing Thunderbird profile, email accounts, and data? I would greatly appreciate your assistance.

Thank you.