Thunderbird has lost my profiles, and buttons aren't working, despite reinstall
Hi there, My computer crashed last night. (It's getting old and I'm wondering whether I have to replace the entire thing.) After the crash, Thunderbird did not start properly, even when I restarted the computer. This morning I reinstalled Thunderbird, and it's still not working although everything else on the computer seems to be fine.
It's tricky to explain what's happening. Thunderbird opens, but my old messages and accounts aren't displayed, and only certain buttons and options work. So I can create a new message, select a recipient and put something in the subject line, but I can't select a sender or write in the message field. When I receive a message, I get the usual notification in the corner of my screen, but then the message doesn't show up in Thunderbird. I can't view my accounts or enter information to set them up again. I'm attaching a couple of screenshots. Starting in Safe Mode doesn't help.
I'd be grateful if anyone has an idea what's happening.
Fiona
Выбранное решение
The crash probably caused TB to suffer the common problem of losing track of the profile location.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1270210
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Выбранное решение
The crash probably caused TB to suffer the common problem of losing track of the profile location.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared
fiona did that solve your problems?
Hello sfhowes and Wayne Mery,
Thank you for answering my question. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you over the weekend. I've got a cold and had a couple of days away from the screen. I now have a deadline and I won't be able to try your solutions until tomorrow.
Until then,
Fiona
Hello again,
I followed the instructions for getting Thunderbird to recognise a lost profile and it is now working again, although it appears to have lost *a lot of my emails* (possibly I was keeping too many of them). Bizarrely, it has also now lost my address book (which previously was intact somewhere as the auto-complete function continued to work).
Thanks for your help!
Fiona
Check to see if there are other profile folders in the Profiles folder, which is located by default at:
C:\Users\<winusername>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles
(AppData is hidden by default; enable on the View tab of File Explorer.)
Profile folders are named like <8charstring>.default
Look for .mab files such as abook.mab (Personal Address Book) and history.mab (Collected Addresses). If they are present in other profile folders and look, by their size, to be your original address books, you can copy them into your working profile folder, overwriting the existing, empty ones.
If there are other profile folders beside the current one, you may also be able to recover mail folders.
You are bang on: I noticed last night that there was an extra profile. I tried loading it, but when I opened Thunderbird from the profile manager, it started the account creation wizard so I thought that it was empty. I don't have time to try it just now, but I'll try to see if I can recover .mab files and mail folders from it. Thank you!