Am in an infinte loop on this site. FAQ answeres not good. Cannot migrate to new computer, Cannot completely remove Tbd using guideance, backup profile dos
Had old comp running Win 10 which crashed w W 10 update. Did my own backup using Norton. also took computer to Microsoft service who did backup and then stripped software to reinstall Win 10 and other MS software. Computer works but MS could not assure that problem would not repeat because of a hardware issue. Bought a new computer with Win 10, downloaded T'bd and FF. T'bd profile on my backup did not bring in anything: Address Book, saved emails, etc. Went back to old computer w reinstalled backup Profile is much larger, however sub-files within the old Profile do not match any of the basic files in the new Tbd installation Profile. Furthermore since new installation of Tbd is probably contaminated, cannot completely uninstall the program and contaminated Profile. The Profile on the old computer has 2.34 MB with 3 sub files: cashe2 (0 MB), safebrowsing (0 MD) and startupcashe (2.34 MB). Start;upcashe has a file startupcashe.4.little which does not fit the Profile sub-flles I though were part of the profile and does not copy into TBd. Therefore 1) how to remove COMPLETLELY the Tbd on the new computer (uninstall using the guidance elsewhere on this site did not work including separately looking for and deleting Profile under Appdata. 2) how to recover address book and retained emails from old installation.
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I think you have been looking in the wrong place for the profile. The cache filenames you give suggest that you were looking at AppData...Local but the data you need are stored at AppData...Roaming.
Did find on my old computer the profile under roaming. {Great; Thanks; Thought I looked there} HOWEVER Copied contents and opened profile on new computer and pasted. Did not get old stored e-mails (which we retain in Tbd on our home computer not on the cloud) or the address book. Noticed that old Profile did not have some sub folders like Mail. Both computers were and are running Windows 10 but the old computer appears to have an older version. [Although Microsoft reinstalled Windows 10 it may have been the older version because the computer crashed apparently because of a conflict between a major Windows 10 upgrade and the hardware (wireless card).] Tbd seemed to work fine no loss of address book or stored emails on old computer even between multiple crashes and restarts before we took computer in for service. Understand that address books and bookmarks may be shared by similar programs on the same computer....is there another possible source for the address book and any idea why retained e-mails were not included in the backup.
This is where the default profile name folder was located on old computer and also on new computer.
- C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\
Method 1: If you backed up the roaming 'Thunderbird' folder or currently can get access to copy old 'Thunderbird' folder then do Method 1.
- Copy backup Roaming 'Thunderbird' folder.
On new computer.
- Exit Thunderbird
Access:
- C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\
- Paste 'thunderbird' folder into 'Roaming' folder and over write the original Thunderbird folder.
This will copy over Profiles and also 'profiles.ini' file, so everything will match old computer.
OR Method 2: If you only copied and have access to the <'Profile name'> folder which by default is called 'xxxxxxxx.default' where the x's are letters and numbers.
- open the backup 'xxxxxxxx.default' profile name folder to see contents.
- Copy all of the files and folders - all the Contents of the profile name folder.
On new computer:
- Exit Thunderbird
Access:
- C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\
- Open the new <Profile name> folder
- Paste all the copied backup profile name files and folders into the new 'profile name' folder overwriting all the default new ones.
You need to make sure you are copy pasting into the 'profile name' folder that is mentioned in the new 'profiles.ini' file.
Start Thunderbird.
Toad-Hall. Thank you. I think I did the second method: copy the old Profile sub folders and files and paste them into the new Profile folder to override the base files installed with the download/installation of Tbd on the new computer. As noted above didn't get the stored emails (which were stored in Tbd on the old computer not the internet providers server) or the address book. As i reviewed the list of sub-folders and files from the old Profile with the base folders/files on the new Profile a couple of folders were missing from the old Profile and maybe a key file or two (although there were many more files in the old Profile). Maybe I did it wrong..did not copy the old profile name (which presumably contained all the sub-folders and files and replace the new profile name.