Break Thunderbird profile into smaller profiles for individual users and services without losing local folders for each
I have had several email accounts (different services and users) in my Thunderbird profile, but I think the file is too big now. Would like to put the separate email accounts in separate profiles including any respective local folders. How do I do this? For example, I would maintain my current default profile with all the email accounts but in the copy I would remove all the services but one and that would then became a separate, dedicated profile. I could then go back to the original profile and delete all but another service. save that as a separate profile. Do this repeatedly until I had my main or default profile separated into the various services at which point I would no longer use that default profile and possibly deleted it entirely.
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This is easy, but the word 'profile' isn't the right word. There is only one profile. What you can do is - exit thunderbird - in file explorer, copy the account folder (will be in MAIL folder or IMAPMAIL folder) to another drive. - start thunderbird, locate the tools>accountsettings>account pane and change the location setting to the location of where you relocated the account. - exit and restart TB just to check that you have proper access to the account. - now, you can go to file explorer and delete the initial account folder. When done, you will still have one profile, but it will have pointers to wherever the accounts are.
I am not sure that addressed my question or if I am afraid to try what you suggest. When I start TB i choose between 1 of 2 profiles - my "default" or main one and another which contains old gmail account emails as local folders plus connects to the gmail account. In my default user profile there are two or 3 other gmail accounts, one yahoo, and one aol. I would like to separate these accounts into separate user profiles but not lose any associated local folders and folders for the connected, live, email account services. I use Windows 10 at the moment
You're assuming that each account must have its own profile, but Thunderbird's design was the opposite: one profile serving all accounts, regardless of physical location. One account might be on drive C and another on drive D, etc. That concept works well for your default profile that has several gmail accounts, a yahoo account, and an AOL account. Separating those out to different drives or directories would be the steps I identified. And there's no risk, as I proposed that they be copied to other locations, not moved. That allows for confirmation that all is working okay before deleting from original location. The accounts on the other profile could be treated the same, but more work required as the accounts themselves would need to be recreated on the mother profile.
Maybe this goes back to my first problem. I am trying to get smaller files to work with since the default user profile seems to have large mail files and slows down or locks my machine. Possibly more memory would or better attention and archiving from some of the users. My thought was to have a smaller file open and avoid problems.
You never mentioned slowing down and locking your computer. Your post indicated a disc storage issue. My suggestion does reduce size of profile significantly, but it doesn't address a performance issue that may be due to having large message files that make demands on memory. Yes, more memory and reducing the number of messages stored is a good strategy.