Since you already installed Thunderbird, I assume that it has created a Thunderbird Profile. That profile doesn't any of your previous settings or e-mails. We are going to gut this Profile and put in the files from the old Profile folder.

1. In Thunderbird: Press the Alt key or F10 key on your keyboard to show the Thunderbird menu. Thunderbird menu: Help: Troubleshooting Information Click the "Show Folder" button beside "Profile Folder"

This will open a Windows Explorer window to the folder on the computer for the current Thunderbird Profile. By default this location is: C:\Users\**yourusername**\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles, and the name of the Profile folder is something like "qlcwybjg.default", with the name before ".default" being random characters.

Keep this window open.

2. Quit Thunderbird.

3. Delete the entire contents of this Profile folder, but not the folder itself.

4. Find your Profile folder from before (wherever you saved it), and copy the entire contents of the folder into the now empty Profile folder that Thunderbird wants to use.

Run Thunderbird, and your old Thunderbird Profile should be active now in it.

Thanks for the info and help! It seems that my address/contacts was successful in transferring over to the new install of tbird. but for some reason not the email accounts & boxes. I then tried to uninstall tbird with the understanding that the profile would still remain intact and might be able to get a re-install to adopt the settings in the profile. But it didnt work. I do see the email boxes under the mail folder. Do you have any other thoughts on how to import tbird mailboxes into tbird? LOL!

A method that i just discovered (but is not convenient) is to proceed with creating an account in the new install of tbird. Then open the mail folder at under the tbird profile. Then replace the contents of the newly created mailbox with the content of the old mailbox. Then upon restarting tbird, that new account is populated with the old emails. But its tricky because the mail box folder names are different between the old and the new profiles. So it can be confusing to copy the emails from one folder to another if the folder names are not the same.

Question1: Do you think there is an easier way of importing the mailboxes? If not, then I will use the above methodology.

Question2: How to i relocate/move the mailboxes from the tbird profile and into a partition that i will dedicate for emails boxes? I couldnt find in tbird where/how to move the mailboxes.

ok, after a little playing around, it seems that the methodology to my question 1 is as follows:

1) create a new account in the new install of tbird. 2) then right click on the account name listed in the left side bar and select "settings" 3) click on server settings. 4) at bottom of server settings dialog window, there is a "local folder" input field. click on browse and target the old mailbox for that particular account 5) then restart tbird.

the methodology for question2 is:

1) copy or cut the mailbox's from under the tbird profile, then 2) paste the mailbox(s) in their new location - preferably in a partition that is not on the system partition (to protect them in case of system crashes). then 3) re-target the mail account in tbird to the mailbox on the disk as instructed via step 4 above.

Thanks for your help! A little clue here or there, can lead to big answers.

~dbBen

It is much easier to move the whole profile, but if you want to get into the nitty-gritty, take a look at these instructions I wrote, which is thorough.

Create a clean new profile in Thunderbird and import your stuff from the old profile

If you want to learn about Thunderbird Profiles, read these: Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data Profile folder - Thunderbird Profile Manager Profile backup Moving your profile folder - Thunderbird

Thanks for the info. Ideally, the method you initially suggested should of worked, imo. But some quirk either in windows or tbird on my system is inhibiting the easy transfer method.

But luckily I have all my pop email pw's stored in a password safe program. So rebuilding tbird manually wont take long.

Thanks again for your help !!