Yonke imikhiqizo Community Forum

My Thunderbird (windows) is really not working, so I want to reinstall the whole thing. I have 4 accounts and a local folder. I don't want to backup all the profiles before reinstalling, as I am having an annoying issue with g-mail (I don't HAVE a gmail any more, but Thunderbird wants to login to gmail every time I open it). I only want to backup the "local" folder, as, so I want to reinstall the accounts one by one from scratch. In that way I hope, I can purge Thunderbird of the gmail. Now the question: How do I backup the local folder in a way that makes it easy to import it back after all the reinstallment?

I have Thunderbird on the old computer. For twenty+ years I have read the instructions for moving it to the new computer. i cannot understand/am not at all confident in my ability AND I have only ONE keyboard/mouse. I have to move it from one computer to the other to operate them.

Right now all email is on the old computer, no email is on the new computer. No email has ever been on my cellular telephone. One set of periforals - keyboard/mouse.

I DO have the Bravura, the Plugable transfer cable and accompanying software, and many other things came across, but not the Thunderbird.

I want to do the move/installation correctly so that not one stored email is lost or corrupted.

I need help.

I will preface this with no I do not have a backup - which is my fault. However I did not expect my account to be nuked into oblivion with no explanation.

As per the title, all my emails are gone. My local folders are devoid of anything I can use and am hoping that everything may be on a server somewhere. This is years of emails, important correspondence, bank information, business, etc. The ONLY thing I can think of is when I download the TB app for android and sync'd it using the QR on the desktop version of thunderbird. I then checked stuff the next day and everything was gone barring emails from that day, all folders, everything was gone. Is there no way to recover this?

I just had a support session and the tech was unable to solve the problem. We tried installing a new version of Thunderbird and importing the messages over from the default install and it just freezes up. He tried replacing account settings with the account settings from a previous version and that didn't work either. He suggested contacting Mozilla to see if there was a way to import messages from the frozen default to my new profile.

I have an old(er) Thunderbird file - we were not able to get the system running so we just plugged in the hard drive and zipped it (not with Thunderbird, just zipped the raw files - see attached) and I have tried all three methods that Gemini spit out to me (#3 looks like what I have seen on the forums here) and the bext I can do is get the first message to pop up (out of about 500+) and can't see the others. Using Thunderbird on the new machine and also tried the ImportNG tool as well. I can't loose this collection, very important. Although the old machine does not work, I still have access to the hard drive if I need more "stuff" off of it. Not sure what the old version of Thunderbird was but the box was last used in Jan 2019 and setup originally around 2008. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

I recently migrated all my LSU.edu emails over to Thunderbird. Of the nearly 30,000 messages that moved over into the Thunderbird Inbox, only 7179 are accessible (blue button), while the remaining 28,012 are listed in a greyed out button.

Please help me access these 28,000 messages.

Thank you

Brett

I have an email address and I want to migrate those emails to a gmail address. The problem is that I have around 2300 emails. I'm copying about 200 emails to the gmail address. The problem is that is taking too long and it's not copying all of them.

What if I copy all of emails wait to sycronize it and then copy it again? It will work? Or is there another way to do that?

From my local folder of emails in Thunderbird, I am able to extract to .CSV and see fields in Excel. While date and time and sender and receiver and subject fields work successfully I don't see the email body coming through. How do I achieve this please?

I managed to append switch values to get the Time field included as part of my extract but the email bogy, or even a truncated part of it eludes me. I understand that some of my email body fields are substantial but currently my repeated exports show nothing. Formats other than CSV would be welcome if they can solve my problem.

In reference to the article [[Knowledge Base Article|http://mzl.la/1ApHiU3]], "Move Thunderbird data to a new computer", this misses the transfer of Local Folders.

The instructions only include moving the Thunderbird application data folder with profile information but does not include Local Folders, after completing these instructions the Local Folders will not be present on the new computer.

The path for Local Folders is under Account Settings > Local Folders, this folder needs to be copied to the similar path on the new computer as well.

I have copied emails from a Windows 10 to Windows 11 computer using these instructions and it appears to work.

System:

Win 11 Home (lastest updates, also my notebook's latest updates from the manufacturer) Thunderbird version 151.0

Okay, this is a multiple clusterf#@$.

I ended up needing to do a Win 11 Home "reset" keeping data. But I needed to back up some files first. But my back up drive was full. Usually, it's because of EaseUs ToDo not deleting files and just adding and adding to the system backup. But that wasn't the main issue: my Thunderbird profile (which I backup separately) was about 280 GIGABYTES in size! This is an extension of a prior problem for which nobody on here new how to solve and certainly nobody from Mozilla chimed in to help. So I did what I'd done before (but it'd never been like this) and delected a couple of THOUSAND seemingly redundant iterations of files from my profile, but NONE of the folders inside the profile.

Of course the Win11 reset deleted Thunderbird and all the profile information. No big problem, I've done this before...but it didn't work copying in all of the old files (from my backup drive) into a new profile and selecting that profile to boot. So, I went to the "Recycle Bin", undeleted all of those files back into my backed-up profile. But I'm only able to get Thunderbird to see all of my address book information. It is not finding my Thunderbird and email account settings nor my email messages (21 years worth). I 100% did NOT delete my email messages (c:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\PROFILENAME\Mail).

I can laboriously redo my email account information (five different accounts) and Thunderbird user settings, but I really DESPERATELY NEED HELP restoring my email messages.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!

I have changed Thunderbird E-mail account from IMAP to POP3. My question is, How do I get all my E-mail folders from the IMAP into the new POP3 account. Nothing followed the changed accounts formats.

Hello Smart People:

I have literally decades of emails from a prior job that I want to detach from T-bird without deleting them. I hope to drastically reduce the size of "Local Folders" so I can more easily transport my email from machine to machine.

Archiving won't work in this case because it retains the mail, when I really want it removed, but accessible again later.

How can I do this?

Sincerely, Bob

Hello everyone,

I am hoping someone can help me recover some EXTREMELY important emails for a legal matter. I was trying to export an entire nested Gmail label (WORK/TNC/TNC DISPUTE) to PDF.

It's a lot of emails spanning from April 2024 that I had painstakingly been going through and labeling to get them ready to print to use as evidence for a work dispute. When faced with the task of having to print all those emails to pdf, one by one, I wanted to chew my own arm off!

I'm convinced there must be another way to bulk print to pdf......and so I went down a few rabbit holes in search of my quick fix.....(I'm not trying to be lazy, I just have very little time left to get this done, and right now I'm losing the will to live if my reality is that I will be busy with this till the end of time.)

I read different threads and questions over the internet and found information that led me to Thunderbird. (Hi, Thunderbird :). I know there are paid apps or extensions that can bulk print to pdf, but I unfortunately don't have the money to pay for them (i.e. the work dispute - salary has been frozen for over 2 years and resignation was denied, so no income and held hostage by my employer - the emails I have lost are literally my future!). Sorry, enough of the why.....

I DID THIS:

So I read that I need to to create a folder in Thunderbird's "Local Folders" with the same name, and simply drag and drop the label from the original label to the local folder label (I did all of this in Thunderbird.

Unfortunately, this went VERY wrong. At first it seemed like it was doing something, but it didn't really do anything that I am aware of.....There was nothing in the local folder I had created and dragged the label to, there was nothing in the original label folder (everything was empty). I died! Then comforted myself with the fact that it's still in GMAIL.....that was the naive, optimistic me talking..... Headed over to Gmail, saw my label name, sigh of relief, clicked on the label name.....DIED 10000000000000 x over.......I continued to cry for the next 4 hours...

.That was the 12th of June.....I'm still trying to get them back.....I have been able to find a few bits of info here and there.....I just don't know how to get them back into Gmail for me to never try be so foolish again!!! (Until someone maybe shows me how to bulk print to PDF?????)....

Here is the current situation and the technical details of what I've found so far:

What happened:

Thunderbird executed a "Move" command instead of a "Copy".

The TNC DISPUTE label is in my Gmail web interface (the emails are not in the label, nor the the Trash and none of my settings anywhere are set to delete permanently etc., on exit).

The Local Folder in Thunderbird shows up on my screen, but it is completely empty.

What I have discovered in the background:

Account Type: IMAP connected to Gmail (*********@gmail.com). (i've replaced my email address name with stars to not put my private email on a public site)

The Local Files: I found the tracking path imap://**********%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/WORK/TNC/TNC DISPUTE. I also found the raw file directories containing TNC DISPUTE (no extension) and the TNC DISPUTE.msf index file.

The roadblock I am hitting:

I read that deleting the corrupted .msf index file while Thunderbird is closed will force it to rebuild the index and potentially reveal the emails. However, at first I couldn't safely get into the folder to do this:

When I clicked "Open Folder" from Help > More Troubleshooting Information, Windows threw an error: "Explorer.EXE - There was a problem sending the command to the program."

When I try to bypassed Thunderbird and use the Windows Run dialog with %appdata%\Thunderbird\Profiles, Windows threw another path error and refused to open it.

I ended up reinstalling Thunderbird and it fixed the access profile issue and I can now access where the data gets saved from Thunderbird.....

I just don't know what to do from here to get my (previously local foldered misshaped moved) folder back in my Gmail. (safely - to not corrupt everything or worse....delete it permanently.....)

The details of the missing emails (contents of the label that did copy to the local drive I think):

Directory Contents (as shown in the attached image)

1. TNC DISPUTE.sbd

• Type: File folder

• Date modified: 19 Jun 2026, 00:55

2. msgFilterRules.dat

• Type: DAT file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:49

• Size: 0 KB

3. TNC DISPUTE

• Type: File

• Date modified: 19 Jun 2026, 05:55

• Size: 670,605 KB

4. TNC DISPUTE.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 22:31

• Size: 3 KB

5. Trash

• Type: File

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:48

• Size: 0 KB

6. Trash.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 06:27

• Size: 2 KB

7. Unsent Messages

• Type: File

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 05:48

• Size: 0 KB

8. Unsent Messages.msf

• Type: MSF file

• Date modified: 12 Jun 2026, 06:24

• Size: 2 KB

Sorry for the long post, hopefully someone can help me go back in time and have my only issue be searching for ways to bulk print to pdf and not having to try restore the only emails that are actually worth being on there.

TIA xxx Margz

I was cleaning up my GMX account in Thunderbird. Then, I wanted to move a whole folder out of the normal one and picked "local folder", but now I can't find where that local folder should be.

It would be very important for me to find my files again.

Why does it say "local folder" when it doesn't create a local folder somewhere?

Thank you for your help.

I recently (unwisely) refreshed my WIndows 10. On restarting I had to reinstal Thunderbird. I thought I'd be able to recover all my old emails by importing the old profile from Windows.old, but I've had some problems: 1) I can't identify which profile was the most recent. 2) The info from each profile has remained on my Thunderbird, although I though it would be overwritten by the next profile I imported. 3) I've tried importing them one by one, but none of the old profiles is the one I was looking for, with all my sub folders. I need the old emails for work, invoicing and tax calculation purposes. I've now been sitting in front of my computer for a couple of days in a cold sweat, the desperation building quietly. Can anybody help?

I asked this question on Google and the AI answer although sounding logical and easy did not work.

I have a number of saved emails that I would like to add to my local folders. Any help will be appreciated.

A couple of months ago Thunderbird installed a new version (150.0.2) that made me enter a new identity. After I did that, I tried importing the e-mail folders from the earlier version (139.0), but totally without success. So I tried re-installing an older version, but this also, was no longer able to import the folders stored on my hard drive. What can I do????

The newest version of Thunderbird wiped out the stored files from the previous version by making me create a new identity. I have tried several times to use "import" to retrieve backed up data from the old version, but without success, even after I re-installed an earlier version of Thunderbird. Each time I use the "import" feature I get a message that it failed unexpectedly. I need these old e-mails because they contain receipts for charitable donations that I need because my tax returns are being audited. What can I do?