Okay, I've never done that, but I think you're on the right track. And this URL may help:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles#w_removing-a-profile 

in the deleted profile, my suggestion is not to copy portions of it, but see if you can fully restore the entire profile with profile manager. Restoring just portions creates an incomplete profile and results in thunderbird prompting to create an email account. And, if that isn't working, you might try copying important components into a new profile. That is - create a new profile (or use the one you're now using) and - import the addressbook (abook.sqlite) with tools>import, and - install the importexportools addon, - then create local folders for each POP folder in old profile to salvage - then, highlight each folder, rightclick and use the importexport option to import mbox file, and then - select one of the POP folders in the old profile (e.g., 'input' but NOT input.msf). - repeat for each POP folder - this saves the messages downloaded to date. When resetting the POP accounts, you will have new messages in the POP account's input folder and prior messages in the new local folders. If you want to merge them, you can repeat somewhat some prior tasks. That would be - highlight each of the new local folders you created, rightclick and select the importexport option to export as eml. - then, highlight the POP input folder, rightclick, select the importexport option to import eml. and then you will have rejoined the folder and can now delete the local folders.

Thanks David I appreciate the in depth reply but to be honest, a lot of it went way over my head. But then quite a bit about this stuff does that. For example, I keep reading about mbox files being in the Mail folder. Well I've looked in every Mail folder and sub folder under Thunderbird and ThunderbirdOLD and I've yet to see my first mbox file (or folder if there is such a thing). I could go on with example after example. I was hoping for a simple solution like maybe copy/pasting everything under ThunderbirdOld to a new profile would fix it. But methinks I have totally screwed myself this time with two errant clicks of a mouse and -poof!-. Like a car crash that can change your life. Might be time for me to go back to handwriting letters in cursive, licking a stamp, and letting the USPS do it's thing.

mbox is the format of thunderbird message folders.

Oh! Okay, then I guess I'd been searching for something that didn't even exist. Oddly enough, knowing that that makes me feel a little better lol!

Anyhow, I tried step 1, importing my original address book with the import tool. I think I went through the process correctly but apparently not because it still doesn't work when I try to use it in T'bird. So now I've been trying to fully restore the profile with Profile Manager. Hitting a brick wall there so far. Actually, that's what I was trying to do first when I copy/pasted all the files in ThunderbirdOld back into a new profile created with Profile Manager. Anyhow, I'll keep fiddling with it. Thanks for the come back  :-)

I am a little lost reading this lot.

Windows creates a windows.old folder when it does certain factory reset type installs, but I have never heard of Thunderbird creating a Thunderbird.old or Thunderbirdold folder. So where this comes from I can not even begin to guess. Beyond expecting it to be something you created as a backup, perhaps so years ago.

Now why would you expect a profile name other than Default? The default name used on installations up until V68 and default release used after the introduction of profile per install in V68. What name were you thinking it should be?

unless you have made a royal mess, the location of your profile should be in %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles

What folders are shown in windows file explorer? A screen shot showing the folders and their creation dates would be most helpful. You can type or copy the string %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles

into the file manager location bar as a shortcut.

Go up a level in the file explorer and open the profile.ini file in a text editor (notepad is good, word is not) copy and paste the contents into a reply here on the forum. That way we can see exactly what profile you have configured. Confusing as it might be.

Now, I do think at this point your old profile will be default and the latest one created will probably be default-release, but those are assumptions I would like to turn into facts.

What is not clear is what prompted your peremptory action in the first place. It may actually still be relevant if it was some issue getting mail or complaining about the profile in some way etc.

I'll bet money you're not as lost as I am. But I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. I'm currently using T'bird Ver 115.10.1 on a Win10 laptop.

I started using T'bird about two years ago and I update whenever I get a notice to do so. I needed it for two Gmail accounts when Gmail forced me to stop using my previous software (Agent) due to "security issues" (according to them). So I chose to use Thunderbird there instead, but still use Agent for other pop3 accounts with a different (not free) provider. I've not yet learned the inner workings of T'bird though. Just followed the instructions on setting it up for two Gmail accounts and was able to import 10 years of email into those two T'bird profiles. Can't say it didn't go without a hitch but.... close enough for a rookie.

I always start Thunderbird by clicking a Tb desktop icon that pops up Profile Manager and that lets me choose between Profile1 or Profile2. I've never thought of either one as a "default". My peremptory action came when I chose to open "Profile2" and then meant to move the cursor to the bottom and click on "Start Thunderbird". Unfortunately, when the cursor was passing over the "Delete Profle" button, my twitchy trigger finger clicked the mouse clicker and up pops a little warning window. The first thing I saw was a highlighted button that said "Don't delete files", so I immediately clicked it.... and it was all over but the weepin' and the cryin'. And that's pretty much where I am now.

I've never created a backup for Thunderbird although I've known I should. Just never got a round tuit so it's still on the "to do" list. And, until now, I've never looked at T'bird in Windows Explorer. So I just assumed a ThunderbirdOLD folder was created recently when I deleted Profile2. But maybe it has been there all along for some reason and I never noticed. I have no clue what that reason might be though. So I just now looked in Windows Explorer at those two folders (T'bird and T'birdOLD) and was surprised to see their Last Modified dates were 2 days apart. ThunderbirdOld on 12/11/2021 and Thunderbird on 12/13/2021. So now I know T'birdOLD has been there all along. And those dates could be about the time I was first trying to get it set up. But here I go assuming again. The dates seem about right for that though.

I think of "Default" as a profile that would open when a named T'bird profile has NOT been chosen. But I've never opened Tb without first choosing which profile I want to use. And I was thinking a profile folder name would contain at least the profile's name so to give me a hint as to where the profile's files are stashed. I was obviously way wrong on that one too.

I hope I haven't made a royal mess but -shrug- who knows? The only thing I've deleted for sure was the profile name from Profile Manager when I took my peremptory action (love that. It's going into my vocabulary bucket if that's ok with you :-) And the only things I've created (that I'm aware) are new profile names in Profile Manager (i.e Profile2-2, Profile2-3, Profile2-4 etc) and I've copy/pasted various files into those new profiles to see what happens. Didn't delete anything though. Oh! btw, I've now created a completely new (no copy/past files added) Profile2 POP3 account with Yahoo for now because I'm being punished in time out at Gmail for making too many attempts to sign in. Their robot apparently thinks only an interloper would do such a thing. They keep sending messages to my alternate account telling me what a great job they're doing protecting my account. aarrgghh!! However, my Profile1 account at Gmail still works just fine.

Still trying to figure out how to post a screen shot of Windows Explorer. Hopefully I'll have it in my next post. Anyhow, I tried typing "%appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles" into the Windows Explorer search bar but I've never been good at "searching" and what came up didn't make sense. Guess I screwed that up somehow.

I normally just manually go find stuff myself. So..... C:\Users\RFant\AppData\Roaming\.... and then there's both \Thunderbird and \ThunderbirdOLD.

Under each of those last two is a \Profiles folder with (drum roll) more folders in them.

Now I have a question. If I post the folder names contained in \Profiles folder as a screen shot, I'll essentially be posting my email address on a rather public Forum. I know we're all good friends here but is there some other way we can do this? I just now looked at the last modified dates and they were a surprise to me. All of the Thunderbird\Profiles folders were dated within the last few days. And 2 of the 3 folders in ThunderbirdOLD\Profiles (.default and .default-release) were dated 12/13/21 and 12/12/2021 respectively (about when I first set up T'bird). But the 3rd folder folder date was 7/24/2024. That was yesterday.

I'm getting more baffled by the minute.

And if that weren't enough, when you said "go up a level" for profiles.ini, did you mean up a level from \Profiles? If so, that would be in \Thunderbird and \ThunderbirdOLD. The \Thunderbird profiles.ini last modified date is 7/24/2024 (yesterday) and \ThunderbirdOLD profiles.ini last modified date is 12/13/2021 (iow when I first installed T'bird).

Again, my email address is contained in both profile.ini's. Will it be ok if I replace my real address with "Profile2" when I post the profile.ini contents here?

I hope I haven't confused the situation more than ever. And I appreciate any help in rescuing my email and folders etc. I just now went back to proof read what I've written here and I don't see any glaring errors but my brain is a bit scrambled after writing all this. So feel free to ask questions whether I can answer them or not. I'll try try again. But right now, I need a nap.

You have given me way more than I thought I asked for, it will take me a while to try and get it straight, but I will try and get back to you later today. Or now as I decided a cup of coffee might help.

You are right in one respect. The folder name in the profile manager is usually located after the random digits in the folder name, following the full stop or period as our American cousins name it. But not always, a profile can be renamed in the profile manger so the name on creation and the current name are not necessarily linked.

The profiles.ini file is what dictates profile names.

I have a profile named tester. It appears in the profiles.ini file like

Name=tester
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/zwldg1rp.tester
Default=1

So to explain that,

Name is the name displayed in the profile manager or about:profiles IsRelative This tells the profile manager if the profile is located relative to the location of the profiles.ini. In this case it is True or 1 Path In this example the path from the profiles.ini file to the profile folder, relative to the location of the profile.ini file.

If the IsRelative was 0 or False as this is a boolean. Then the path will be an absolute path to the location of the profile folder. This is usually the case when a drive other then the default drive is used to hold the profile folder. For Windows computers that will begin with a drive letter, but a UNC path is also valid as it is required for Unix, Linux and macOS as they really do not use drive letters in their paths.

This is what I want to examine in your profiles.ini, to be honest naming the profiles as complete email addresses in not something I had ever considered. I understand naming profile like work, play, abc biz etc, but with an address, that I had never considered. So you could change the information, but I suggest just removing the domain part of the email. That way we will both be talking about something that does not require a complete codex to translate. You are as you say struggling. Lets make is as simple as possible.

I want you to ignore the Thunderbirdold folder. My guess is you renamed it when you originally set things up to get a fresh start and it has lingered ever since.

So we are only talking about the Thunderbird folder. I gave the path as %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles for a reason, you chose to ignore it, but in explicitly points to the Thunderbird\profiles folder, but asked the operating system to resolve that path to the appdata object that windows maintains to point to a relative location. That may or may not be where you have been looking. I am guessing it is, but it is a way to be sure. Just as I will tell folks to go to troubleshooting information on the help menu and click the show profile folder. It is a way of interrogating the computers about where they think things are. To ensure what I think is the case is the same case the programs think is, I ask them.

Even knowing where my profile is on the physical disk, I will still use that extended clicking process to get Thunderbird to tell me the path for some things. Just to see where Thunderbird thinks the profile is. Especially when it is not doing things like load what I expect it to.

So using the path %appdata% is what Thunderbird does when it reaches out to the operating system to load the profile.ini file. It attempts to load the file %appdata%\Thunderbird\profile.ini not C:\Users\RFant\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profile.ini They may well be both pointing to the same file, but the only way to be sure is emulate the same sort of request and see for yourself.

SO in \Thunderbird\profile in each iof the sub folders you will see a pref.js file. Do they have dates in the time frame of interest here? Generally they are updated with any preference changes when you close Thunderbird, so recent dates should be sort of expected. Also check the global database date (global-messages-db.sqlite). That should be updated every time mail is retrieved, so very recent dates on it would be the order of the day.

I am guessing if you indeed removed the profile and not the data that there will be a folder in the \Thunderbird\profiles folder that is not referenced in the profile.ini file and it is there we need to look. But I am still missing so much information.

I am hopeful your profile is still there and can be brought back into use.

Note there is a Mozilla pastebin. https://pastebin.mozilla.org/ while it is public, you could paste your profile.ini data there and only have it exposed to the world for a day or two rather than permanently. A couple of days should be enough for David and I to look at what we need to I hope. Although I return to work in a couple of days.

Sorry.... I didn't mean to say I use an entire email address as a profile name. I just use the username part. Not the @domain part. But any scammer, spammer or troll perusing my posts would see I'm talking about Gmail. Never mind that I may be a bit paranoid.

Pastebin sounds like a plan though. I don't see a choice for 2 days. Is 1 day enough? Or a week could work if you would copy and delete it once you've seen it. I'm using Notepad soooo... I choose "Plain Text"? Not sure what the right to left check box is about.... but I guess I'll skip it. K, here's the URL. I'm assuming that's the "Link" they're talking about? https://pastebin.mozilla.org/yi5bqtyq

Oh! And I didn't ignore your suggestion. I tried searching several times and all but one search ended with "No files found" after 10 or 15 minutes for each search. The only time it found anything was under the \ThunderbirdOLD\Profiles line of folders. I assumed it was my error because I had been so focused on that area and maybe I had done something to make the search thing go back there. I dunno.

Anyhow, I'll be back later. Just wanted to get the link posted here for now.

There are 5 subfolders under \Thunderbird\Profiles.

The Date modified for the Prefs.js file in each of those subfolders is between 7/22/2024 and 7/26/2024.

The Date modified for the Global-messages-db.sqlite file in two subfolders (.default and .default-release) are 6/08/2022. And the other three subfolder Dates modified are 7/21/2024, 7/21/2024, and 7/26/2024.

Hmmm.... I have another rookie question here. I have a screen shot of what I think you asked for (In Win File Explorer \Thunderbird\Profiles showing subfolders with dates modified). I was going to post it to pastebin but it's a .png file and I don't see a choice for that on the pastebin screen. Is there some other choice there that I can use that will work for posting a .phg file?

Btw, I've done more failed attempts at searching with "%appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles". Does this normally take longer than 10-15 minutes to do its thing? I have no clue what I'm doing wrong.

you can post a png file here on the forum,

Hi David, Well yes, I understand that I can, and I will if I can't post it on pastebin. But I'm still a bit paranoid about leaving it up very long (or at all actually). Maybe I can save it as something other than a .png and post it to pastebin that way? If not, I'll post it here.

Anyhow, I think I may have had a eureka moment... but I'm not sure. I plugged "%appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles" into a different search bar. The one at the bottom left of my desktop screen. Didn't take long (about 1/100th of a second) to get where it was going. And turns out it was the same \Thunderbird\Profiles with the 5 subfolders where I got the Date modified information for the prefs.js and Global-messages-db.sqlite files. So I'm thinking that's a good thing.

Hellooooo?? Is anybody out there??

I am confused on what you are attempting. If you have a profile, thunderbird isn't particular on where it is, so long as you tell it where it is. A simple way is to click help>troubleshootinginformation, scroll down left side to 'profiles' and click 'about:profiles', and then click 'create proflie button, click next, enter a short nickname for the profile, then select the browse button to locate and select the profile. The normal place for profiles is in c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunerbir\profiles, but that isn't mandatory. '

For a refresher, please post summary of where you are in the process and desired next steps.

I'm a bit confused myself. But basically, I'm attempting to restore a profile that I deleted. I chose to "not delete files" when I did that. And it's my understanding that it's possible to restore those files to a newly created profile. I know how to create a new profile. What I don't know is how to recognize the original files that were in the profile (the ones I did not delete). If I can ever figure that out, I'm assuming it's a matter of copy/pasting them all to the newly created profile and thereby end up where I started, before the fiasco, with all my folders and messages and address book etc in tact. So far, I've failed miserably.

Oh! the refresher. I know where the files are (I think). But I don't know which ones they are. I've tried copying individual files and even the whole folder into a new profile but so far nothing has worked.

Your best bet is to use the entire profile, not pieces of it.

Yes! That's definitely what I want. And what I've been trying to do. How do I do that?? I've tried everything I can think of from C:\Users\MyName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles But so far, nothing works. Which is no surprise to me because I clearly don't know what I'm looking at or what I'm doing.

Ok, since you have copied the profile to the traditional (although not mandatory) folder, there are just a few steps left: - click help>troubleshootinginformation' - scroll down to 'profiles' and click 'about:profiles' - now click the 'create profile' button in upper left - click next - enter a short nickname for the profile and then click the browse button to locate and select your profile - then click 'finish