Bugbear, not bedbug! Old age strikes again

I would recommend using Thunderbird's built-in Import and Export tool to transfer your Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-import https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export These support articles should assist you with instructions.

Thanks, Ben

Hi Ben,

That didn’t work very well. After I imported, I had my emails, but every one of the accounts keeps constantly putting up messages that the passwords weren’t accepted. Also, the total appearance of Thunderbird is far more basic. I can’t even get at my Profiles in my Macrium backup, as it claims I don’t have access!

Edit: Sorted the passwords and started getting the general appearance back to normal, then made the mistake of trying to unify my messages from all accounts and managed to wipe them all out. Tried reinstalling TB several times and importing again -still no messages. At this point, TB no longer appeared under Settings/Apps. Am currently restoring my backup, going back to my pre-clean installation days…Going to bed

THere is one safe procedure: - exit thunderbird on old pc - copy c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to an external drive - create thunderbird on new setup and exit - copy the exported thunderbird profile to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming to overwrite the default thunderbird folder that was created in setup - restart thunderbird

Thanks for the reply, David. I'll use it in my next foray into a clean install.

Will it restore my TB exactly how I have it now (see photo) or will I have to spend ages trying to work out how to set it up again?

It restores exactly. This is because you copied every bit of content. All settings remain. Use those same keystrokes to make periodic backups (with TB not running).

It's very bizarre. The first Clean Install I did gave me several working icons in the Taskbar and only Edge on the desktop. The second and third today gave me fewer icons on the Taskbar and dozens of empty icons on the desktop. When I installed TB and closed it and went to Users/me, most folders, including the Appdata one, were missing! See screenshot.

PS What keystrokes to keep a backup?

To see appdata, click to windows file explorer, click View>show>hidden items. I also suggest clicking view>show>file name extensions.

God, I'm stupid! I'd forgotten I'd need to set everything up! Also today - left hot water running for 15 min, then the cold for 10 min and got the wrong bottle of milk out of the fridge. Heading for dementia, I think. Thanks for your patience, David - I feel Clean Install 4 coming on!

PS What keystrokes?

Uh... keystrokes are in my earlier response. Yep, dementia is in your future. :) I avoid the symptoms by keeping only one bottle of milk; that avoids getting the wrong one.

I would recommend using Thunderbird's built-in Import and Export tool to transfer your Thunderbird profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-import https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export These support articles should assist you with instructions.

If you are going to recommend the use of the import export tools for profiles, it is a good idea to tell folk that more than 2 years after they released the tools they still do not bring passwords with them.

Personally that is something I want. locating and manually reentering 26 passwords post use of the crippled import left me fuming.

The complete failure of the development team to address the bug in 2 years just makes me angry. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1779022