Yonke imikhiqizo Community Forum

Three weeks ago I attempted to migrate my TB profiles from a 2014 mini-mac to a 2024 mini-mac. I thought I did a better job of backing up my profile using CCC than I actually did. In the migration to the new Mac I lost all my subfolders from the last 20 years. Apple created a new Profile and 2 restoration Profiles on the new Sequoia based mini-mac. I wasn't familiar with these and panicked. I copied those files, took them back to the original mac and tried to follow Toad-Hall's method of restoring the subfolders recommended to bmack1 on 23/11/22. However, I failed to carry out the step of going up two levels in the path of the Library to copy the entire "Thunderbird" file and only copied the Largest restoration file. This in turn, "contaminated" the 2014 original Thunderbird mail profile and only an Inbox and Trash subfolder remained. Today, after 3 weeks of searching and reading the generous contributions of this community, I came across a post explaining that the "sbd files" will show the subfolder headings I created in the original sought after Profile. And I found it!!! My problem is I have re-read Toad-Hall's method of re-installing the original Profile and tried to carry that out to the letter by placing the old Profile within a Thunderbird folder and switching it with the current one. But it's still listed as the "Restoration qqg...file" and probably shouldn't be, but I don't want to go any further and risk losing it because I feel I almost have it. So any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

Hello Thunderbird Team I am facing a crisis and am praying you can help me. I have been using Thunderbird since 2021. I had setup my account and archives by year containing messages in Folders (Inbox, Sent & Deleted). During a recent laptop migration, I accidentally deleted my profile on my old laptop. I immdeiately recreated it. However now all email stored in my inbox has disappeared. Second, I cannot seem to locate the archives. So I have 2 requests for urgent support: 1. How do I locate the messages in my inbox prior to deleting my profile? 2. How can I recreate the archive with folders? I can see that the profile folder is a massive 22 GB. So the data is there somewhere. Please help me recreate my email profile so I doi not face a business crisis. Thank You Warm regards Milind

I use Thunderbird 115.18.0 on a Windows 7 machine. I wish to transfer all my Thunderbird data to a machine running Linux Mint 21.3 which has Thunderbird 128.12.0esr. I have not been successful after many tries. Could this be because the Thunderbird revisions are different? If so, can I get 115.18.0 to install on my Mint machine? If not how should I proceed? I have already tried creating a new .thunderbird directory with ********.default directory from the other machine. I have also tried a new .thunderbird directory with a the ********default-release directory as directed by one site.

Oct 23, 2025, 19:35 CST

I FINALLY was able to find the original profile, all messages in the In Box, plus all folders with their contents. 'Lost' when our ISP's ' tech support person ' had me close/remove the TB POP3 account and create an IMAP account).

I need to merge the new small profile (In Box & with basic folders) into - onto the BIG, original, profile. So each time I get/check mail everything goes to, ends up in, the Thunderbird account containing all the OLD data and new working account.

Please remember I am barely TB literate, so start at 1 (A), not 27 (Z)& no tech words. Nor acronyms please.

Thanks! Remain in GOOD health, be WELL, 'n be

• • SAFE!**

Robin

I tried to start Thunderbird and it would not open. There was a message that read, "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." After trying to fix it and nothing worked, I uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird. Now all of my contacts and data is gone. When I tried to use the import tool I selected import from another Thunderbird installation and I can't get past the continue button.

How do I recover all of my data and contacts/addresses?

Thunderbird switched automatic to Freedom. No possibility to avoid. All connections where lost. After input connection data mail where downloaded. But over 2000 old local stored mail are gone.

How to restore all old local mails, structure and archives?

Got up this morning and stared up Thunderbird as I always do but got a 'new account dialog'. All of my emails, folders, settings, etc. are gone. Went through the Help - Trouble shooting process to find the old profile. There are three profiles listed in 'About Profiles' and if I launch with any of them, all I get is a new setup. Freaking out here as I have 10 of thousands of emails, in multiple email accounts, in a relatively complex folder structure which includes online and local folder storage. I have a feeling that Thunderbird updated last night and is the cause of this problem.

Running Windows 10 Pro v 22H2, build 19045.6332 . Thunderbird 140.3.1esr (64-bit)

I have problems migrating my Windows 10 Thunderbird profile to a new computer running Linux.

On the new computer, I want to put the profile into a custom folder, not the standard folder (which would be /home/torben/.var/app/net.thunderbird.Thunderbird/.thunderbird in my case)

Here's what I did:

I installed Thunderbird 128.13.0esr under Fedora Linux 42 using flatpak.

Upon first startup, I aborted the mail account setup process

Opened Help/Troubleshooting information ... about:profiles

Create new profile ... Choose folder (I am translating everything from my German language version)

--> That's where an error message occurs: "/home/torben/.thunderbird not found ..." (interestingly, this folder simply does not exist (yes, I know how to view hidden files) although about:profiles also says that the "root folder" of the two already existing profiles default and default-esr is inside /home/torben/.thunderbird !?)

Nevertheless, in the profile assistant I can choose the folder (/home/torben/Dokumente/Gemeinsam/Documents/Briefe/Thunderbird_Profiles/tj63nudj.default) containing my migrated profile

The profile assistant tells me that my personal settings and data will be saved in /run/user/1000/doc/e9915464/tj63nudj.default (?)

After finishing the profile assistant, I can see the newly created profile in about:profiles, but it says "This profile is currently used by another application and therefore cannot be deleted" (what other application?)

I click "normal re-start" in the upper right corner of the about:profiles tab

After restarting, I open the about:profiles tab again. Now I can click on "run profile" under my newly created profile and Thunderbird opens a new window where everything works fine: All the migrated mails are there, I can log into my usual imap accounts etc.

I can close both windows, restart Thunderbird again and again and everything stays fine

BUT after some time (about 10 minutes) Thunderbird won't (re)start anymore and displays this error:

"Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding. To use Thunderbird, you must first close the existing Thunderbird process, restart your device, or use a different profile."

The error persists after rebooting.

This error seems to be related to that whole manual migration process, because when I simply follow that mail account setup assistant after a clean re-install of Thunderbird, I can keep using the program without any issues (although the /home/torben/.thunderbird folder isn't created either) ...

Would be very grateful if someone had an idea how to solve this problem ... Thanks in advance!

Bonjour, J'ai essayé à plusieurs reprises d'installer Thunderbird (a chaque fois 1 don est requis) mais à chaque fois le même message s'affiche : "Le profil Thunderbird ne peut être chargé. Il est peut-être manquant ou inaccessible". Une première fois l'installation avait fonctionné mas j'ai essayé de modifier le profil afin qu'ils puissent reprendre le carnet existant sur mon ancien ordinateur. Aujourd'hui je suis bloqué. Avez vous 1 solution à me proposer ? Merci

I have an old Windows 8.1 computer with Thunderbird installed and it has worked fine. I want to move my email to a new Windows 11 computer. My old Thunderbird is listed as version 115.18.0. The version on my new computer is listed as 141.0 and is listed as up to date. NOTE: On my old computer my 115.18.0 version is also listed by Thunderbird as "up to date." Apparently, Thunderbird cannot update my old computer version any more.

Here's the problem. Thunderbird's instructions for moving my email from one computer to another includes this warning: "To move your data, you can copy your profile folder to the equivalent location on your destination computer. Ensure both versions of Thunderbird are up to date or identical before attempting a transfer as otherwise it might fail."

So, since Thunderbird does not allow me to have "identical" versions on my two computers, how do I move my email from my old computer to my new computer? (I apologize if this question has already been asked and answered.)

Hi I had a systems crash and did a windows 10 reinstall. Windows created a folder windows.old. In the folder is users/"username"/appdata/local and roaming/thunderbird/profiles/ In the profiles folder for example I have a profile 34eu8280.2020. I transfered this folder to the newly installed thunderbird folder under roaming/thunderbird/profiles/ Next windows+r entered thunderbird-p. Create profile, entered 2020 as profile name, chose folder, entered 34u8280.2020, select folder, finish. In profile manager selected 2020, work offline, unchecked use selected profile without asking at startup, start thunderbird. Profile not showing up only account setup page.

At a lost as to how to proceed.

Any help would be appreciated in restoring profiles

Stan

I got a warning that I am running out of disk space, on checking I found the Thunderbird_profile_backup.zip is currently 297Gb. I must do something about this, can I delete it, or is there another way to reduce this rediculous size?

I am running the latest version 140.3.0esr (64bit) I have two IMAP accounts, and I do download some mail into local folders, but nothing near this sort of quantity. Any help or suggestions would be most welcome.

How can I change the Thunderbird Profile filename (instead of the random number)? I don't see this in the existing help files, and searching didn't find any similar questions I want something recognizable, like "thunderbird profile as of July 2025"

I see several folders within Library / Thunderbird. Some say "profiles COPY mm/dd/year" but the one titled simply "profiles" seems to be the active one. All these folders contain the same three random numbered files, and the one named xxx.default seems to be the one in use. I see two more users on startup, their files named xxx.TEMP and xxx.OCT2015 which I never use. Might be leftovers from when I had to change the SETTINGS around.

I backed up Thunderbird and reloaded it after I had been hacked in gmail, but now I have 2 profiles accessing the same gmail. One shows the gmail address and the other is my old "local" profile. The old one has my typical 16000 emails, while the new one shows 30,000 emails with no doubles. Can I delete the new one?

My windows 10 PC died. I copied the the profiles folder from the old appdata/roaming/Thunderbird to the new Win11 PC, but TB does not pick it up, asking to create a new account "John Doe". Any ideas? Best, K.

Same profile existing in Thunderbird and one is taking up 100 GB space. The Cloud station folder was setup before, and I have no history of it, it might be a shared drive, I don't know why it takes up 100 gb of space and it has a same copy on the Users profile with lesser storage around 33 gb. Can somebody help, i'm not deleting any profiles cause I don't want to accidentally delete emails and the profile has emails older than 2020.

After deleting Thunderbird quite some time back, not because I was unhappy, but I changed computers and was going to install it on my new one. Instead, I'm back using my older computer because I hated Windows 11. After installing it on this computer, I opened it and didn't get the normal setup instructions and to make a long story short, after plunking around for a few minutes, I saw messages that I had written sometime back. I tried deleting Thunderbird (again!) doing a c cleaner and making sure that nothing was left on my computer and tried again. Same thing! I need to know what I can do or what Mozilla Thunderbird has to do to allow me to actually setup with new information when I install it again. Thanks for ANY responses that will solve this headache.

We are unable to sign in to thunderburd

using correct crudentials. We wen to geek squad to correct this issue. He installed webnet as a work around.

He said we would not lose any thunderbird emails however all the new and saved emails are no longer available to see or open. We would like you to reinstall thunderbird and restore all the lost emails. How does this get resolved?