Unable to migrate Thunderbird profile from windows 10 to windows 11
I spent the whole day yesterday trying to migrate from my old windows 19 machine to a new one. I tried everything I could find on line including of course everything on this site. I even reactivated my old computer and made a new copy of the old folder making sure that all tabs were closed when I did so. Thunderbird refused to recognize it when I pasted it into app data roaming.
In a way it's a blessing. I had saved folders of data going back many years, most of which was useless. Sort of an enforced downsizing. But it is a real hassle losing my contacts and email lists. Is there any way I can move/recover them? Also some old attachments.
All Replies (3)
That info is regularly posted, so I'll repeat it here: here is the info in brief steps:
- ensure thunderbird is not running on old machine
- enter %appdata% in search window on task bar and press Enter key
- this should open windows file explorer in Appdata folder
- highlight the Thunderbird folder and copy to external media
- ensure thunderbird is installed on second computer and NOT running
- enter %appdata% in search window on task bar and press Enter key
- you should be in Appdata\roaming folder , copy&paste the exported Thunderbird folder there. This may prompt to overwrite an existing folder of same name. allow it
- start thunderbird and all should be there
If the transfer has already been done and you have missing components let us know.
Thank you for your reply, but I did all that yesterday as I indicated in my question. But jus to be sure, I printed out your instructions and followed them to the letter. To be sure. I copied a fresh copy from my old computer to my portable SSD and used it to replace the Thunderbird folder in AppData on the new one.
When I tried to open Thunderbird after replacing the folder in AppData, I got the same message I got yesterday: "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded., it may be missing or inaccsessable."
Do you have any other ideas to help me?
That is true if the setup on the old computer was not the default. The thunderbird folder contains not only the default profile, but also the file that identifies it as the profile to use. That guarantees a successful copy if the default is used. That is also why, in copying the thunderbird profile, you must allow overwriting any existing files. Go to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird and open profiles.ini. it is just a text file and can be accessed with Notepad. This file has the name of the profile to open and it is this file that thunderbird opens to determine the profile. Compare the name in profiles.ini to the name of the profile folder you copied in. For a default setup, they will match. You can edit the profiles.ini if the actual profile folder has a different name. If unsure, please post contents of the profiles.ini file and a screenshot of profiles folder to show name of profiles.
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