Thunderbird profiles won't transfer, message filters don't work
Running Win10 Pro ver 1511 and Thunderbird 45.2.0. Clean reinstall of Win10 last week followed by all the apps and FF & TB. Copied the TB profile folder over to a usb thumbdrive before the Win10 reinstall, then copied the profile back into the new TB. TB recognized NOTHING, no address book, no message filters, no emails, no account settings, no folders created in Local Folders, NOTHING! I re-d/loaded emails from the server (gmail), recreated the LocalFolder subfolders, also message filters (in Local Folders, also copied the file into the other email account's folders, but no luck when I 'run filters'). Something is definitely screwed up and I can't figure it out. Was told today by a Windows IT guy that MS was coming out with a big update in Aug that is supposed to address profiles. Any thoughts, anyone? Thanks,
All Replies (6)
re : Copied the TB profile folder
After reinstalling Thunderbird program, you would have run it the first time to create a new default profile. Thunderbird would have asked to create mail accounts, but as you want to use everything in the backup profile folder, you would not need to create any mail accounts.
re: Backup...Is it a copy of the old profile from the Appdata/Roaming folder: eg: C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\
'Profile name' is usually 'xxxxxxxx.default' where the x's are letters and numbers.
You would then open the backup profile name 'xxxxxxxx.default' folder and copy all the Contents.
In Thunderbird Help > Troubleshooting Information click on 'Show folder' button a new window opens showing default contents of your new profile name.
Close Thunderbird now - thi is important. Right click in that new default profile name folder and select 'Paste', overwriting any of the default files.
Restart Thunderbird.
If by any chance you actually copied the old profile folder name folder and not the contents, then you would have needed to edit the 'profiles.ini' file to point to that different profile name, otherwise it would still be looking for the new profile name and not the copied one.
Modified by Toad-Hall
The usual problems with profiles are copying them into the wrong place, or not understanding the unique name in use in the profiles.ini file.
The safe way to do it is to let Thunderbird create a new empty profile, and copy the contents of the old profile over it - that's the Profiles folder and everything beneath it, leaving profiles.ini intact.
If you do copy the old profiles.ini over, you need to check the pathnames it uses. ISTR that at one time, individual profile data folders were filed alongside the profiles.ini file, and not beneath it inside a Profiles folder. If you have any such inconsistencies, your Thunderbird won't be able to see the old profile.
You didn't get any error messages about a missing or inaccessible profile?
I doubt that anyone representing Microsoft who mentions "profiles" is talking about anything relevant to Thunderbird (and Firefox) profiles. :-(
Ah! Toad-Hall has beat me to it again, and with much more detail. ;-)
Modified by Zenos
Toad-Hall/Zenos - thanks for the comments. Initially after installing TB I copied the contents of the old profile and pasted those files/folders into the newley created profile folder in Appdata/Local/Thunderbird/Profiles, NOT the Roaming folder you mention (when I searched on line for hekp I'm pretty sure the instructions were to use the Local folder, not Roaming).
So what do I do now? I've manually set up the email accounts and d/loaded and am current with emails (use Pop3), created the message filters which don't work, still don't have the old address book. Should I copy those files from the old Roaming folder and paste them into the current Roaming folder? And I still don't understand why the newly created message filters don't work as before. Thanks, again.
The "show folder" button in Help|Troubleshooting Information always takes me to the Roaming folder:
C:\Users\<me>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile_name>
The stuff in my "Local" appears to be just caches:
2016-07-26 12:21 <DIR> .
2016-07-26 12:21 <DIR> ..
2016-07-14 13:23 <DIR> Cache
2016-04-29 09:43 <DIR> Cache.Trash19928
2016-03-14 09:41 <DIR> Cache.Trash24353
2015-12-14 14:18 <DIR> Cache.Trash26281
2015-08-21 08:36 <DIR> Cache.Trash28671
2015-07-27 11:28 <DIR> cache2
2015-07-29 17:17 <DIR> OfflineCache
2015-07-27 11:41 <DIR> safebrowsing
2016-07-26 11:30 <DIR> startupCache
2016-07-26 12:16 1 _CACHE_CLEAN_
And we don't seem to get this crazy split on Linux.
So, yes, put it all into Roaming.
Modified by Zenos
C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\
This is where all profile, emails, message filters, address books...the whole lot is stored.
Appdata\Local is just a cache used by Windows OS.
Zenos/Toad-Hall - thanks for this, I'll try it when I get home in a few days.