How can I restore my "inbox" file in thunderbird 31.3 in Ubuntu 14.04
The header pretty much asks what I need to know. I've got a copy of the inbox file from an older installation or TB and want to drag/drop it over the [empty] new one so I can use TB 31.3 as my e-mail client while preserving my older e-mails and I can't find the article I used the last time to tell me where the file goes. Can anyone help me with this? I need to know the exact folder the file is stored in. BTW I've got over 15,000 messages I can't afford to lose so I'm a bit of a pickle here. Any All help will be appreciated.
Thank You
All Replies (2)
The files are in your profile. They are arranged by account, grouped under IMAPMAIL or MAIL (the latter including the special Local Folders account.)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb
The files come in pairs, such as Inbox and Inbox.msf. Inbox is the important one of these two, the second being an index and which will be rebuilt automatically if absent.
You'll also possibly see files with an sbd extension, which reflect subdirectories in your mail accounts.
I'd be nervous about honouring the structure of the mail store, so my own preference would be to import the mail box files using ImportExportTools. IIRC, the imported file(s) would "land" in Local Folders and then you could transfer messages to the preferred location.
If you are confident about what's in each file, then you may be able to avoid the copying/moving step.
My file is a pop3 not IMAP. I have the inbox file I just need to find out where to drop it into. BTW I don't want to avoid the copy/move step that's exactly what i need to do. I need to replace the empty file that a new installation creates as part of Formatting a hard Drive and starting all over again with the file I saved that has all of my old messages in it.
Zenos said
The files are in your profile. They are arranged by account, grouped under IMAPMAIL or MAIL (the latter including the special Local Folders account.) https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb The files come in pairs, such as Inbox and Inbox.msf. Inbox is the important one of these two, the second being an index and which will be rebuilt automatically if absent. You'll also possibly see files with an sbd extension, which reflect subdirectories in your mail accounts. I'd be nervous about honouring the structure of the mail store, so my own preference would be to import the mail box files using ImportExportTools. IIRC, the imported file(s) would "land" in Local Folders and then you could transfer messages to the preferred location. If you are confident about what's in each file, then you may be able to avoid the copying/moving step.