In my former installation I moved all mails in several subfolders of my email-adress

Please provide the full path to those folders.

I did not realize that this folder is for imap-usage

Which folder?

the mails and contacts were not secured directly within the folder 8signs.default (and the subfolders).

'Secured' means backed up? '8signs.default' sounds like the profile folder. Typically mail is also stored within the profile. In your case, did you mess with the 'Local directory' setting within your Account Settings?

But my mails must be anywhere (for example in a cache folder)

There is no mysterious cache folder. Messages are where you told Thunderbird to put them.

So, what is the position of this cache and does a possibity exist to get those mails and contacts.

Contacts are stored in the profile as well. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird

I post the secured local profile-folders, a profile-folder within roaming... \tb\profiles is also existing.

Please provide the exact information about what you copied, from where to where with the full path.

The methods described migration on mozilla websites failed.

Please provide a link.

Thanks for your advices, that gave hints to me searching my mistake(s). So here is my additional question. For example I am looking for my personal adressbook. This file (abook.mab) should be located within the profile-folder (="8signs.default"). But within my backup the profile-folder contains further subfolders only and there are all files missing (which I see within my new installation). As I have several old backups, I am sure, there were no such files in the old installation. Where shall I look for these files? When doing my former installation I made it in the usual way, i. e. I didn't change the standard-suggestions of Mozilla. Thanks for your expected help piepsibc

This file (abook.mab) should be located within the profile-folder (="8signs.default").

There are two possibilities:

• your backup skipped over those files - you already ruled out that
• ="8signs.default" isn't your profile folder

You can try to check your original installation for another profile folder. For more information about moving the address book see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_address_books_between_profiles

Thank you, problem is solved and TB working correctly. Best regards

Good. When your problem has been fixed, can you mark the thread as 'Solved' please? Thank you.