It sounds like you are trying to import an existing email profile into Thunderbird?

You'll need to edit your profiles.ini so that it includes your new profile and make sure that the default is set to your profile. The profiles will be stored in: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

You can also manage your profiles using the profile manager: Go to start menu > type: thunderbird.exe -profilemanager

Yes, oh yes. I thought I had lost all my emails and contacts, and then found I did have a back up of profiles, a few months old but good enough!

I am sorry to sound stupid, but I looked in a profiles.ini file somewhere else and could not understand what it was all about =1 or =0??. I confess I am well into my eighties and mostly use my computer for email communications so not at all intelligent with tech stuff. I do try to keep up with the times, but times are a lot faster than me! Quote "you need to edit your profiles.ini", yes, but how? And also I could not see the .ini file, its not with the other two folders Crash and *****.default do I have to make one?

What do I do to it? How do I make sure that the default is set to my profile

Thank you so much for this answer, I was getting desperate, as another problem is my new provider. I have access to the internet but when trying to set up the email address they gave me its rejected. ALL the information provided is accurate but their system won't respond.

If you are in your eighties you're doing very well with computers. My Dad wouldn't have a chance at doing this kind of stuff and he's 68 now.

The 1 is true and the 0 is false. Most things in computers always start with 0 rather than 1. Where it says: [Profile0] - that is the first profile in the list and you can have as many as you like.

So you should edit the [Profile0] area and ensure that Default=1 is set (remember 1=true). Then Thunderbird will point to this profile. My profile 0 looks like this:

[Profile0] Name=Main Profile IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/wnnblf52.20-June-16 Default=1

The strange name "wnnblf52.20-June-16" is the name of the folder inside the profiles folder.

You can also use the profile manager to edit many of the settings here but you can't add your existing profiles here as far as I can tell.

I am still not sure about the text of the .ini file is this how it should be, as I looked at the old one, and then yours - as they were differently set out. I didn't put my name, but My Name :)

[General] StartWith.k71egekkdefault=1

Name=My Name IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/k71egekk.default [Profile0]

I'm not sure if case is important but it should match whatever the folder name is for your profile you want to restore.

It should be something like:

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0] Name=NameYourProfile IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/folderNameOfProfile Default=1

BTW I noticed that you had StartWithLastProfile wrong in yours. With this setting, you are just ensuring that the program always uses the last used profile. The default=1 part is where you decide which is the main default profile.