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.

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?

Believe my T-bird account has somehow been corrupted. Takes forever to load on PC and always puts new emails in Trash folder. Often does not accept correct password. If I save / backup PROFILE, uninstall T-Bird and delete any Thunderbird folders on PC, if I restore per backup, will I be restoring the corrupted app. Don't want to loose email addresses, thousands of emails and email folder structure. Will a restore work? Thank you. Greg D

PS Version of T-Bird on laptop still puts all new email in Trash, but loads much more quickly, etc.

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?

Hello. I recently upgraded from my older MacBook Pro (now factory reset and sold) to a new MacBook Air. I use Thunderbird as my email client and I have many folders that live within my Local Folders. When I transferred all the data from the older Mac to the new Mac via iCloud, and set up my new mail account (IMAP), the folders did not download into the program. I've tried using Subscribe but none of my pre-existing folders show up. Any assistance would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Hi,

When I opened Firefox today, it asked me which profile I'd like to use. I named one Katy and then continued. Now, I can't see any of my bookmarks, none of my passwords are saved, none of my sites recognized. I've been using Firefox for years. Everything I have is saved there. I just want my old stuff back. I'm signed in on my account, but can't see another profile that I can choose. My phone still has all the passwords and bookmarks from before but I I can't see what profile I'm signed in under. Can anyone help?

Thank you!

Katy

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

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

Hello, i have installed latest TB an try to use it on one PC - This PC is part of company network, users login to windows by domain controller login. there is also a exchange server in the same network. i have created a running and working thunderbird-exchange connection for 2 different users but with the third user its noch working anymore. is there a limit to user accounts on one PC or? Thank you all kind regards andi

If I'm not mistaken, between FF146 and FF147 it appears the location of the profile directory has changed. It was:

   /home/<user>/.mozilla/firefox  

and now is

   /home/<user>/.config/mozilla/firefox

Is that correct?

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?

This afternoon, I clicked on a link from an email and for the first time got a choose a profile pop-up. I do not want this; I have read info on Mozilla and elsewhere about its purpose but it doesn't say how to just stop the pop-up - there should be an option just stop the pop-up because I don;t want to have to choose amongst options. I have started copy-pasting the links in emails and going to Chrome and will seriously have to reconsider using Firefox of this continues. I don't want to have to type about:config or anything - this should have been an opt out or opt in thing and I want out. Thank you for your help.

No matter what I've tried, I cannot figure out a way to edit or delete the profile from the new profile manager. Both about:editprofile and about:deleteprofile show up as a blank page (with how it looks on my normal profile for comparison). I have tried deleting the folder multiple times, but the icon still shows up in the manager and clicking it just creates a new profile with the default settings. It also does not appear when using firefox.exe -p. I had previously been using the about:profiles to manage my profiles and wanted to see if I liked the new version (I didn't), hence why I was using it in the first place.) I'm currently using Firefox version 149.0 and Windows 11 on the latest version. I have found no solution that gets rid of it. I would also be fine getting rid of the profile manager UI so it stops bothering me.

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?

I tried to transfer Thunderbird file from old computer to new computer but get "Profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessable." when I start Thunderbird. The old TB file works on old computer and I am pretty sure I copied it and pasted it into the new location in place of the current Thunderbird file.

We are currently rolling out a profile management solution based on Ivanti User Environment Manager. In order to configure file includes and excludes in the profile management tool, we have to “standardize” the Firefox profile path in the filesystem. We have implemented a PowerShell script, which reads the currently used profile from %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\install.ini, renames the appropriate profile subfolder to “firefox.default-esr” and replaces the entries in installs.ini and profiles.ini.

The script seems to be reliable. However, for around 10% of the users, we are seeing issues when the user launches Firefox after the “firefox profile migration” happened. Firefox opens but none of the GUI controls is accessible. Firefox is completely unusable. See screenshot attached.

We do have workarounds to resolve this issue, such as completely wiping the %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox folder and let Firefox re-build everything from scratch. But we are still trying to find the root cause the issue, because our customers have more than 100k clients, what will be a big impact and hard to handle for the helpdesk.

We are currently unable to reproduce the issue on test clients. Even copied Firefox profile folders form affected clients don’t show the issue on other clients.

Therefore we want to find out and ask for your help:

- Is there a supported way to “standardize” the filesystem folder name of the Mozilla Firefox (ESR) profile of a user? - What are the files within a Firefox profile that are required for the profile and the application itself to properly start? - Do you have any idea which files in a Firefox profile (in a corrupted state) could cause our issue?