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"Export Email Accounts" feature is a Big Heaping Pile of U know what. Need Accts ONLY!

  • 3 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 11 views
  • Last reply by gp

Keith B, IT
Keith B, IT
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A HUGE Complaint I have is Exporting Account Files, I wanted to Backup (Export) my Email Accounts (many accounts) to use on a new Thunderbird Win 11 Notebook install (I have many because I do remote IT for clients), but Thunderbird ONLY offers a selection to BU Accounts AND ALL EMAILS (Messages)!

With 12+ Email accounts and all the Emails (which I don't need since they'd be downloaded anyway with a SMTP setups), the accounts BU ends up being 6+ GB and it usually fails when I try to use the Zip File to "Import" into the new Thunderborg install !! The Thunderbird Team NEEDS to give users the option of ONLY backing up all the Account Settings, NOT INCLUDING EMAILS!! Can you give this Feedback to the Mozilla Team??

A HUGE Complaint I have is Exporting Account Files, I wanted to Backup (Export) my Email Accounts (many accounts) to use on a new Thunderbird Win 11 Notebook install (I have many because I do remote IT for clients), but Thunderbird ONLY offers a selection to BU Accounts AND ALL EMAILS (Messages)! With 12+ Email accounts and all the Emails (which I don't need since they'd be downloaded anyway with a SMTP setups), the accounts BU ends up being 6+ GB and it usually '''fails''' when I try to use the Zip File to "Import" into the new Thunderborg install !! The Thunderbird Team NEEDS to give users the option of ONLY backing up all the Account Settings, NOT INCLUDING EMAILS!! Can you give this Feedback to the Mozilla Team??
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All Replies (3)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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My regrets. There are known problems with tools>export for zips larger than 2 gig. My suggestion is to use the old way of copying c:\users\<yourID>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird and copy to same location on new pc, but AFTER installing thunderbird but not running it. Do the copy from old PC when Thunderbird is not running also. Otherwise, some files will not be copied. Thanks for writing.

Keith B, IT
Keith B, IT Question owner
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@David - I have to wonder if the Mozilla Thunderbird Team will ever correct this "known problem", since it's been that way for years. I hate using Windows Outlook or "Mail", but at least doing this "Export" is fast and easy and only moved the Account Settings and PW's. Maybe Mozilla should do some Code reverse engineering?

Thanks for the alternate solution, I will use that next time as I've already had to enter each and every email account from scratch into the new Thunderbird install.

Best regards

gp
gp
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@Keith B, IT

I tried on a test Thunderbird installation to create a new profile, then start it, obviously getting a blank state asked for a new account, then stopped Thunderbird, copied the Prefs.js file manually from the active profile, started the new profile again and got my accounts copied.

Maybe it could work for your use case too ? Obviously the Thunderbird version should more or less match else they could be problems when the software has changed options format or worse. The passwords are of course not copied by this, but copying also the logins.json and the key4.db should take care of that. I did not test the add-ons and themes case, it's more involved :-)