Thunderbird Community Forum

Hi everyone - and big thanks in advance for considering my request: I have/ had windows 11 on my old machine and windows 11 on my new machine; because my 'old computer' is not running anymore at all (liquid damage), I can no longer start Thunderbird and follow the 'export tool function' (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-export) and thus can only do the manual transfer (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer); I didn't think that I would need to go through the export tool steps when I saved the Thunderbird profile folder regularly as backup on the cloud; yet when I started Thunderbird on my new machine following the above steps by moving the Thunderbird profile folder manually, the result is that - although Thunderbird is 'running' and the mailbox is functioning properly - the key folders are empty (i.e. the sub-folder structure is completely lost, in fact there are no individual emails at all); the issue seems to be that the size of the Thunderbird profile folder is too large (the "Profiles" folder has a size of 20.5 GB) for doing this transfer via copy & paste of the Thunderbird profile folder from the cloud (I also tried USB) to the new machine; I understand that the size issue via the manual transfer could be 'overcome' just by starting Thunderbird on the 'old machine' and following the above steps explained under mozilla support; yet that's no longer an option; what could I do please?

I recently upgraded my older PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Thunderbird worked fine for a few days following the upgrade, but when I went into it today, all the local folders were gone. 4GB worth of e-mails. Good thing I backed up four days ago, so I haven't lost much.

I have searched through the help given earlier for a similar problem, but can't seem to still get Thunderbird to work properly. Furthermore, Thunderbird won't import the backed-up data. I also can't get the menu bar to show along the top. What all am I doing wrong?