Yonke imikhiqizo Community Forum

Hello, I’m experiencing an issue when saving email messages as .eml files from Thunderbird.

When I save a message to a network storage folder (for example, a shared drive or NAS), the file seems to save correctly, but when I try to reopen it later, the content is completely blank — the message body is missing.

If I save the same email to my desktop or a local folder, the file opens perfectly and displays all content as expected.

Environment details:

Thunderbird version: 140.3.1esr

Operating system: Windows 11

Network storage type: NAS

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Could this be related to file permissions, encoding, or how Thunderbird handles .eml files on network paths?

Thank you for your help!

Thunderbird v.144.0.1 is importing only the inbox from online outlook.com email account. I've tried right clicking on the account name and selected 'subscribe' to see if the missing folders would appear and this did not work for me Thunderbird searched and when it was done the search box was empty. How do I proceed?

My laptop fried and I have it currently in the computer ER. They are attempting to salvage the information from the hard drive, but it my take a week to complete this process. I have purchased a new laptop and I am close to completing loading just about everything. I have installed Thunderbird, but because I did not have a clean backup I have no local recovery for Thunderbird. Is there by any chance a way that there could be a way to find a recovery file for my Thunderbird? Rebuilding the calendar and the address book is going to be like walking in 4 feet of soft sand at high tide at the beach.

Thank you, Richard Germain

Hi, I am very frustrated not with you, but with AOL. It appears that they did something on their end last evening (10/28/25) that made third party software not work. I have been on the phone with their tech support for over 4 hours and they can not explain, nor fix the fact that I can't get email with Thunderbird and also on my phone with Edison. If I export all of the current information in my current account (tied to POP), using the export feature and put it on my hard drive and call them back, can I then import it to (IMAP)? Their potential suggestion although the account was set in POP format last October when I purchased this new computer.

Please I am at my wits end as I have lost a days work dealing with this.

Thanks, John

I have used Thunderbird since its inception and keep all my mail history since '07 well organized for each year (archived in local folders for older material and many separate subfolders for various email categories (utilities, credit cards, kids school etc.). I originally attempted Apple's Migration program for transfer but lost all my categories in the process. I went back and made sure I had identical versions of Thunderbird 140.4 on each computer (couldn't get the newest version on my old computer). I followed the directions in the Thunderbird support pages to a 'T' to transfer my profile from the old mac to the new one. The only variation in the directions was the inclusion of the profile within the path of <Mac HD-Users-myname-Library-Thunderbird-Profiles> but the location was the same for both computers. When I returned to my old computer the final time I also lost all of it's organization subfolders. Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated, because to have to resort what now looks like 1000's of unread emails in my inbox would be impossible to say the least. Thanks in advance for your time and attention. Sincerely, Jack Milne

I have a backup.bak file.

My computer was re-set and I lost everything.

How can I restore my new downloaded Thunderbird, using this backup.bak file.

Thanks.

Rik

Hi, I've set up TB successfully on a new PC and been using it a while. Then I noticed my local folders archive group of subfolders was missing. I followed some instructions about moving local folders file across from the old to the new version.

Now I see the individual archive folders without the folder group name 'archive'.

Also, there are a couple of other files not visible on the new platform although they were in the original installation local files and were copied across.

I was careful to ensure the same version running on both PCs. Also that TB was closed when copying files across.

Any pointers appreciated!

Hi, Can I have in thunderbird several separate local folders whose data is stored in different directories on my hard disk? if yes, how can I configure this? so far I have one lokal folder (next to many email accounts)... and if yes, can I move one of these folders to a different machine with another thunderbird and import it there?

kind regards Chris

First I beg your indulgence for my approximative enclise ! Some years ago I used thunderbird on an old MacBook Pro getting mails from pop servers. Indeed I can do an export of thèse mails but I have some questions : First : does an export contains my 2 accounts ? Second : how can i see thèse export ? Must I réinstall Thunderbird and import ? Must I keep pop access or can I use imap ? Is there a reader of thèse exports ???? Your expérience will be a good help

I have my gmail account on Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Pop_OS. The Windows has local folders the Pop does not. What happens to the emails on the machine without? I was trying to make room on Windows for a dualboot. I copied everthing to usb then accidentally deleted my user files. 1)How do I recover the local folders from the usb? And/or 2)Do I even need to since I have Thunderbird on Pop? My concern is that, since I set up local folders on Windows, that those emails never got sent to the Pop machine. Otherwise, they all might be there and I just have to locate them which means I don't have to restore the Windows emails.

I am not sure if this is the correct place to ask my question. Apologies if you think it should be somewhere else in Thunderbird Help.

My old W10 machine crashed in September. I bought a W11 machine in October.

A colleague managed to rescue all my data from the W10 to a HDD.

I installed Thunderbird 143.0.1 to the W11 machine. On running the program it found me and my emails. I hoped it would find my wife's emails too. But no luck so far. Both domain names are the same. I've tried adding the details I have for my wife's email as a new account, but the program goes on and on looking with no result, and no end. I have to unplug the power cord to end it.

I've followed advice from the help pages to Find and restore my Profile without opening Thunderbird. In the process I've deleted the Profile on the W11 install, and substituted the Profile from the W10 install. It was around 8GB. So I assumed that Local Folders and my wife's details would show. Neither of these things occur. My account is shown together with recent emails.

What is happening? How can I get my wife's email account to show? How can I find my archive of emails in Local Folders? Any help gratefully accepted. Thunderbird 101 maybe?

Hi, I have used Mozilla Thunderbird to receive my emails from Google's gmail for several years now. I have created many folders in Thunderbird, to store many of my incoming emails in. Recently, I had to purchase a new computer with Windows 11 installed, as I had used Windows 10 for many years on my old, now outdated computer. Is there a way to retrieve my folders from Thunderbird, so that I can have them on my new computer, or are they lost forever? I have my hard drive from my old computer, so would they be on that hard drive somewhere? Thank you.

I'm in the process of transferring emails from my Pop 3 Windows live mail program on a Windows 7 PC to a pop3 Thunderbird program on a Windows 11 PC. But I'm uncertain how to do that in a way that I keep the same file structure in Thunderbird. When I search how to do this on this forum and on a Google search, I only see how to copy them into Thunderbird into a sub folder. If I do this, won't the Pop3 on Thunderbird simply recopy all of the emails from my server, duplicating the same file structure above the subfolder? Is there a way to do this so that the old emails sit in the primary folder position? Thanks.

I recently booted up a new installation of Thunderbird on a new laptop running Fedora Linux after my old Laptop running Ubuntu died. Fortunately, I had been regularly backing up the old machine with Deja Dup. I restored all my files from a recent backup. All my files seem to have been successfully recovered except that many locally-stored Thunderbird messages are missing, and some local folder names have been corrupted.

Since I see problems only with Thunderbird, I suspect the problem lies there rather than with Deja Dup.

Has anyone else had problems with restoring Thunderbird from backups? Is there something I might try to recover the missing messages and corrupted folders? Should I be using a different backup in the future?

I have successfully moved over several email addresses and then the last one stumped me! I am receiving emails on that account but only 1 of the 9 folders came over. I have tried manually adding the folders but I get error messages from TB indicating that the outlook server cannot find the folders. There are old emails in those folders that I will eventually need migrated over. What am I missing?

Also, I am required to enter my password each time I open emails from the SmarterASP email server. That is going to get old. How can I stop this?

i just noticed i that outlook.com acct is number 2 [superqaz@outlook.com_2] . i didn't create a second acct knowingly and have never had 2.

could it be anything to do with my recently changing my [security] phone number and MS saying something about it taking effect in 30 days?. also i just yesterday used the TB tool to import my acct details which successfully recovered personal TB folders which had previously only been present on my other PC

am using up to date TB and win10

thanks anyone

When I reinstalled Thunderbird, I got my account back, but the Local Folders were missing. I found where they're hiding on my computer, but I can't figure out how/where to copy and paste that folder so they show up in Thunderbird. Can someone walk me through those last steps, please?

Thanks

Please help me – Thunderbird not recognizing mail files for a pop3 I am using Thunderbird version 115.10.1 with Windows 10 I have multiple pop3 accounts I deleted one of those accounts in Thunderbird to test another email software. I then deleted that software and added that pop3 account back to Thunderbird However, the reinstalled account does not show any of the emails or folders for that account. They are no longer visible. But when I go here C:\Users\Dale & Cheryl Office\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ajcrll97.default\Mail In the “Mail” folder I see the following (see image)

How can I get Thunderbird to recognize the old email directory of all my past email history for the reinstalled pop3 account?

I am grateful for any help that you can provide

Thank You Dale

I am using Thunderbird 128.0 under Windows 10. I routinely archive old emails, with the archives stored in my local Thunderbird folders.

I'd like to periodically delete the older archives, but to keep some sort of backup copy. Is there any way I can copy or export the archive folders to somewhere else, such as another folder on my computer or an external drive?

And if I succeed in doing this, will it be possible to search the copy, and to restore individual messages if necessary?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mike