Форум спільноти Thunderbird

In the Move Thunderbird data to a new computer article, it says under "An alternative method for Mac":

"CAUTION: Do not open Thunderbird again on the original computer - unless you repeat the process in reverse to transfer the folder contents back to the original computer before opening the app. (If you forget, you can manually check one version against the other to ensure important messages are retained, but it's messy and time consuming.)"

It's not entirely clear to me why this would be an issue, but it makes me wonder if that would make the following use case problematic:

1. The user already has Thunderbird on "Computer A" set up, and wants to copy their Thunderbird profile onto "Computer B" to get the same setup and email accounts on both computers. They intend on using both "Computer A" and "Computer B" simultaneously. For simplicity's sake, let's assume all email accounts use IMAP, so emails are synced with the server, and thus simultaneous access between multiple clients is possible.
2. The user follows the instructions to copy their Thunderbird profile from "Computer A" to "Computer B".
3. The user opens Thunderbird on "Computer B" to make sure everything is working (let's say it's working and emails are syncing to "Computer B").
4. The user then opens Thunderbird on "Computer A". Their expectation would be that they would see the same emails and settings as on "Computer B". If they composed/moved/deleted an email on either computer, those changes would sync and be visible on the other computer.

Would this be an issue? Or should the user just start anew on "Computer B" and manually sign in to all of their email accounts again?

I'm trying to move from Windows to Linux without downloading all my imap messages again. What I've tried: 1. Install tbird on Linux, create new profile. 2. Close tbird. 3. Using Linux file manager,

 - delete contents of new profile folder
 - copy contents of old profile folder into new folder
 - delete Compatibility.ini in the copy

4. Open tbird with -p (profile manager)

I've tried twice with different results. The first time at step 4 I started offline. Thunderbird opened will all my previous tabs open, except that all the internet tabs reported connection failure - as expected. Under account settings, both local folders and my gmail account reported the correct (new, linux) path. When I went online and completed the gmail OAuth dialog thunderbird reported an inbox summary folder error, and deleted all the imap mbox files. I closed and restarted tbird- which failed with a crash dump. the terminal window reported successful minidump creation- the file manager showed the minidump file at zero size.

I repeated the process (recreating the original unmodified profile). This time at step 4 I started online, and tbird never opened- it generated the crash dump immediately.

Two questions: 1. Is it possible to transfer an imap profile and avoid re-downloading all the old messages? 2. What am I doing wrong that I'm getting the crash dumps?

Windows: [Compatibility] LastVersion=147.0_20260108190847/20260108190847 LastOSABI=WINNT_x86_64-msvc LastPlatformDir=C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird LastAppDir=C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird

Linux: [Compatibility] LastVersion=140.12.1_20260628021646/20260628021646 LastOSABI=Linux_x86_64-gcc3 LastPlatformDir=/initrd/mnt/dev_save/Thunderbird-portable64/thunderbird64 LastAppDir=/initrd/mnt/dev_save/Thunderbird-portable64/thunderbird64

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.

I used to have Thunderbird on this laptop and was using Microsoft Office 365. I have since stopped using it from GoDaddy. I uninstalled the old Thunderbird and reinstalled a new version. I am trying to enter the new server settings but I keep getting the old Office 365 settings showing up. How do I get rid of that and find the new settings page to enter the new settings?

All my old email accounts are showing up and I only want to add 2 to the new Thunderbird. I thought uninstalling would delete all the old stuff. Please help.

I created a user profile for IMAP and all was OK....Until I deleted the profile for POP and I lost all e-mail folders that I didn't move to IMAP. My PC is running Linux Mint. How do I get my lost e-mails?

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.

After some Windows Updates installation, my computer behaved very erratically, and I had to reset it. After selecting the option to keep all files, it appears to be a joke, as I have ended up having to reinstall almost everything. Regarding Thunderbird, all the files have disappeared including the folder with the profiles, however I did a back of that folder on a separate disk and I need to know if that can be used and how to go about it.

Have been using Thunderbird for years. Tried to set it up so my wife could also use it but the profile was the same as mine so when I deleted her profile, it also deleted mine and now I do not have access. How can I recover my profile so I can have access to all my previous emails and email addresses??? Also, since I cannot access the profile it will not open the app menu so I do not have access to the version.

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!

I had to log in this morning, the first time as its automatic, and when i did all my folders and emails have gone. Where are they as there is important information in there which i need. The page layout is different too as i can't delete anything. HELP