Windows 10 will reach EOS (end of support) on October 14, 2025. For more information, see this article.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

How to back up my account settings?

  • 2 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 28 views
  • Last reply by dgillesp220

dgillesp220
dgillesp220
more options

I just bought a new PC and have ported all my email accounts over to the new Thunderbird. It appears that everything is set up correctly but the process of recreating the accounts on the new machine/new Thunderbird revealed a gap in my backup processes as I don't presently have anything that captures the account settings; either at the Thunderbird level or for each account created under Thunderbird. It became readily apparent to me that if I didn't have this information available on the other computer (so, for example, a house fire or computer theft), it would be a nightmare to somehow collect this information.

Is there a way to capture this info with a command(s) or a script?

Thanks!

I just bought a new PC and have ported all my email accounts over to the new Thunderbird. It appears that everything is set up correctly but the process of recreating the accounts on the new machine/new Thunderbird revealed a gap in my backup processes as I don't presently have anything that captures the account settings; either at the Thunderbird level or for each account created under Thunderbird. It became readily apparent to me that if I didn't have this information available on the other computer (so, for example, a house fire or computer theft), it would be a nightmare to somehow collect this information. Is there a way to capture this info with a command(s) or a script? Thanks!

All Replies (2)

dgillesp220
dgillesp220 Question owner
more options

As I continued with a few tests of the different mail accounts, I realized my Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses were missing. Comparing to my old computer I determined they were in fact in the profile. I have a theory on this and that is related to my original question in this post.

When I installed thunderbird, it created a new default profile for me:

C:\Users\{my name}\AppData\Roaming\thunderbird\Profiles\{new profile}.default-release

I copied over the old profile and contents from the old PC:

C:\Users\{my name}\AppData\Roaming\thunderbird\Profiles\{old profile}.default

and changed every account to point to the "old" profile. I am guessing that even though every account plus Local Folders all refer to the old profile, there is something somewhere at the Thunderbird level that is referring to the new profile, and that is where it is going for the address books. I somewhat confirmed this by shutting down thunderbird and renaming (adding a suffix to) the new profile then trying to restart Thunderbird. It would not start. I exited, removed the suffix and restarted no problem.

So now I have two questions:

1) Given my current situation: 

  a) Is it possible to make a change somewhere in Thunderbird so that it no longer knows about the new profile (I can rename it and then, after a confirmation restart, delete it)?
  b) If it isn't possible, do I just copy abook.sqlite and history.sqlite under the new profile or do I need the sqlite-shm and sqlite-wal files too?  OR???

2) For the future, if I am doing a fresh install, is there some way to point Thunderbird to the transferred profile before startup so that no new profile is created and will doing this automatically configure all the accounts that existed on the previous computer (I do regularly back up my profile folder and contents and I am now thinking everything that I needed was in there somewhere just begging to be used, LOL)?

Thanks!

dgillesp220
dgillesp220 Question owner
more options

Hi all. I have nearly finished configuring my new PC and my final step is creating a system image of the C drive before using the computer. I was/am hoping to have the above questions answered and any last changes implemented before I make the system image. Any help would be greatly appreciated!