Thunderbird: форум сообщества

Good morning,

I’m reaching out because I’m having trouble with my Thunderbird email and need some assistance.

I was using Thunderbird without any issues before, but now all my old emails have disappeared. I can still receive new messages, but I’m unable to send emails like I used to. I also can’t recover or view any of my previous emails.

It seems like something may have reset or become corrupted, and I’m not sure how to restore my old messages or fix the sending issue.

Could you please help me get Thunderbird working properly again and recover my old emails if possible?

Thank you for your support.

Dee

As explained in the subject line - title, I do NOT need nor use the Today Pane.

It use taking up needed space for the down arrow & popping up distracting me.

How do I eliminate it? I will even, if necessary edit Thunderbird to get rid of it.

'AND bold text' somehow, a new version of Thunderbird was created - downloaded and all my passwords AND bookmarks are gone. I looked for the profile, but it's new so does not contain passwords NOR bookmarks.

THANKS! Remain WELL & be SAFE!

Robin

is there any way to perform a dynamic backup of Thunderbird. By that I mean a regular (e.g. daily) backup of the profile or at least the mailboxes using a scheduler without closing Thunderbird down?

Hi, I have been running low on hard disk space due to the bloated Windows 11. I have been trying to clean up Thunderbird by deleting a bunch of saved emails and compacting, but the size of my profile folder is still about 3.5 GB. I looked at all of the subfolders under my profile and found a bunch of what I think is dead storage.

Under the MAIL folder there are 4 folders for what looks like my current Local Folders and 3 older local folders. Under the IMAPMAIL folder there are 4 folders for what looks like my 2 current email addresses and 2 older unused email addresses.

I looked under the account settings for the Local Folders and the 2 email addresses and have identified the 3 out of the 8 folders that are still being used.

So my question is, is it safe to just delete these apparently unused folders?

7-1-26: Problem when I updated/downloaded Thunderbird 152.0.1. When I try to open, a dialog box asks if I want to create a new profile. By mistake I clicked the "new profile button" but didn't create a new profile since I want to use my previous profile just as with past upgrades. However, I couldn't move past that screen so I closed Thunderbird. Then when I try to re-open Thunderbird, I get that same dialog box and can't move forward. What can I do? Your assistance is truly appreciated, Rick

First, I have very limited understanding of software. I need very simple explanations.

Here's my issue. I use Thunderbird on my desktop computer. I have used the Import/Export > Options > Backup Scheduling function to backup my Thunderbird email to my USB/flash drive. I have labelled the backup folder on my flash drive "Thunderbird email backup." That folder contains numerous subfolders including: 1) calendar-data 2) chrome_debugger_profile 3) crashes 4) datareporting 5) extensions 6) ExternalMailFolders 7) Mail 8) minidumps 9) saved-telemetry-pings 10) scheduled-notifications 11) settings 12) shader-cache 13) storage.

Again, these are the subfolders created/named by the Thunderbird Import/Export backup. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THESE FOLDERS MEAN.

Here's what I want - it's actually very simple. I want to be able to see (read) my backed up email on my flash drive without using the Thunderbird installed on my computer. I want complete interaction with the backed up email without my desktop Thunderbird - or my online email account - being involved at all.

My understanding is that Thunderbird Portable is supposed to be able to allow me to do that. I downloaded Thunderbird Portable (from https://portableapps.com) to my flash drive but when I tried to access it the first thing it did was try to force me to put in my online account (POP?) information.

I don't want to do that. I just want to open Thunderbird Portable on the flash drive and have it realize that all of my backed up Thunderbird email information is right there in the same flash drive. I want it to just access and use what's right there.

I was really hoping that Thunderbird Portable would simply ask me where to look - in a very user-friendly way! - and I could tell it to go to my "Thunderbird email backup" folder on my flash drive (WHERE ALL MY THUNDERBIRD INFO IS!) and it would simply do just that and provide me with complete Thunderbird service for the backed up email.

Am I missing something? Can someone give me a VERY SIMPLE walk through to do what I would think should be a very simple thing? Thank you. Chris (6/29/26)

PS - I've read the Mozilla Support ARTICLE: Thunderbird Portable (Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition) and other portable apps as alternatives (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1285834) and it alludes in general terms to exactly what I want to do but it does not give any step-wise instructions.

Hi everyone,

My antivirus as quarantined 2 files from my TB profile:

• d:\internet profiles\thunderbird\profiles\z3rq1w7t.default\prefs.js
• d:\internet profiles\thunderbird\profiles\z3rq1w7t.default\virtualfolders.dat

I asked the antivirus to restore them, but the damage is done. TB has lost track of everything I’d stored over the years, including my email accounts, emails, preferences, etc. It’s like a fresh install.

But I can see that my profile still contains about 5 bg of data. So everything’s there, but it seems it no longer knows how to access it.

As you can see, my profile isn’t buried in the depths of Windows; it’s on my D drive. Perhaps I just need to ‘reconnect’ TB to the correct profile, but I don’t know how to do that anymore…

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance. Guy

I'm trying to trim down my hard drive, and I see that my Profiles folder has 2 ImapMail subfolders. In the first of them, imap-gmail, I have 14 All Mail files numbered "-1" to "-13" plus the most recent All Mail (today's date), unnumbered. Most of these All Mail files are quite large. Can I delete all of them except the most recent, unnumbered one? In the second subfolder, imap-gmail1, the files are all from before 2025, and instead of multiple "All Mail" files I have multiple "rstmp" files. What's the deal? Can I delete this whole folder? Is it a backup? Thanks for your help. FYI, I'm up to date in Windows 11 and Thunderbird, with a fairly new computer. I hope I've provided enough into. Looking forward to your help. all the best, Steve

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.

Hi, I am hoping that the community can help me find an answer to this. I have two computers that I use for work. The one in the office has TB running all the time and before I leave for the weekend/vacation I would close TB, copy the profile folder to a USB (or copy it to cloud) and then paste the profile folder on my work laptop (at home). While all the settings get copied (local folders structure, addons etc.) as I use IMAP, it downloads all the mail on the new system regardless. I thought that it should have the latest mail downloaded as part of the profile folder, is that not the case? The bigger issue is that none of the Completed Tasks Lists, Templates, etc. get updated. It still shows all the older stuff on the work laptop and no updates carry over from the PC (at work). Going through the profile folder I see multiple copies of the files prefs.js, folderCache.json, global-messages-db.sqlite appended as: prefs-computername.js and folderCache-computername.json etc. (The computername is the name of the PC - office/laptop) The profile name is the same between the two computers. TB is only started after the profile is copied locally. TB version is the same between systems. I am left scratching my head why somethings are copied but not others. Hoping that the community can help me here. Thanks!

Have been using the 104.9.0esr 64-bit release on Windows 11 for some time now (mostly for email, involving a number of email accounts) and have been generally satisfied...

...but discovered when I started looking into switching over to the 145 default release that I have a capital-P Problem. The first thing recommended on making that change is - sensibly - to back up one's Thunderbird profile. Only as far as I can tell, I don't *have* any such file anywhere on my system. [To answer the obvious question - yes, I've got "View" set in File Explorer such that it should be showing me hidden files.]

I have drilled downward through all the USERS subdirectories on my C: drive. "Default" and "Public" have nothing at all (as one might expect). My personal subdirectory has a Mozilla directory under "Roaming", and both a Firefox and a Thunderbird directory therein, but the only things in the Thunderbird directory are an empty folder labeled "Crash Reports" and a tiny "desktop.ini" file.

There is a "Mozilla Firefox" directory under Program Files, but nothing in that hierarchy looks applicable. There is a "Mozilla Maintenance Service" directory under "Program Files (x86)", but nothing there appears relevant. There is a "Mozilla [alpahnumeric hash]" subdirectory under "Program Data", but nothing there appears relevant.

And in fact, I begin to think I have a bigger issue than I thought I did...because the more I poke at my C: drive, the less I'm seeing...to the extent that I'm not at all sure where the Thunderbird program itself (not to mention a quite large accumulation of associated email) is being kept.

Which would be nice to know if one were attempting to back up one's mail before changing program versions....

I'm having a connectivity issues. Did some searching which directed me to the Appdata Profiles folder. When looking inside I see Mail and ImapMail. Both have numerous folders inside. Too may I believe. Based upon the screen prints of the folder's contents, do you see conflicts?

I have three email addresses with Outlook.com.

Pop.windstream I have not used in many years. Not sure what others I could possible delete.

Thanks.

I've used thunderbird for years. Now I can't get it back. I tried a clean uninstall/reinstall. Downloaded from the thunderbird site. Seems to install fine, but then says no profile recognized. I put some old profiles in the appdata\roaming\thunderbird\profiles in desperation, but still no luck. My clean uninstall did involve registry entries (Revo-Uninstall). So I'd like to get a clean start with Thunderbird, but it won't let me. Any suggestions greatly appreciated. I dread the idea of using another email after all these years!

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

My wife and I both have Thunderbird accounts. The issue is that when we open Thunderbird, both accounts show on one screen. Is there any way to separate logins and only show each of our accounts on the screen?

Thanks, Sam Orner

I cannot get thunderbird to run on my computer (it runs fine on my wife's computer). I keep getting the profile can't be loaded error. I have tried the fixes recommend here but none worked.

Hello- I am having a major problem recovering both emails in my inbox, and more specifically all of my local folders. I am using Windows 11, Pop-3 server. My Local Directory keeps reverting to att-1.net and changes I made to my prefs.js file to eliminate the att-1.net folder and revert to an att-net folder containing all the data are not sticking. I've tried using Claude to diagnose and correct, but that hasn't worked. I am not extremely proficient at this, which is probably part of my problem. Any advice would be welcome.