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Hierdie gesprek is in die argief. Vra asseblief 'n nuwe vraag as jy hulp nodig het.

How to specify an absolute path to a profile in profiles.ini when there is a space in the path?

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  • Laaste antwoord deur plasman5

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I have a pretty large Thunderbird email profile on my Windows 10 laptop, which works fine. The profile itself is stored on a different disk partition than the Roaming\Thunderbird folder, so its path is specified as absolute in the profiles.ini (with IsRelative=0). Due to another, apparently unsolvable, problem with my account, I had to create a new user account to which I am migrating all apps and data from the old one by copying to the newly created folders and configuring them if needed.

However, the new user name has a space in it (it is like "FirstName LastName"), whence the absolute path name to that profile looks like "X:\Users\FirstName LastName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default". But when I specify this path in the profiles.ini and the installs.ini files, Thunderbird fails: if I don't enclose the path in quotes, it launches two executables and then says that another copy is running, and if I put quotes around the path, upon launching it pops open the profile manager which doesn't see this profile, only the (pretty empty) default one.

How do I specify this path in the profiles.ini file? I can't afford to have the profile itself stored in a subdirectory of where profiles.ini is (which would have allowed specifying a relative path).

Thanks!

I have a pretty large Thunderbird email profile on my Windows 10 laptop, which works fine. The profile itself is stored on a different disk partition than the Roaming\Thunderbird folder, so its path is specified as absolute in the profiles.ini (with IsRelative=0). Due to another, apparently unsolvable, problem with my account, I had to create a new user account to which I am migrating all apps and data from the old one by copying to the newly created folders and configuring them if needed. However, the new user name has a space in it (it is like "FirstName LastName"), whence the absolute path name to that profile looks like "X:\Users\FirstName LastName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default". But when I specify this path in the profiles.ini and the installs.ini files, Thunderbird fails: if I don't enclose the path in quotes, it launches two executables and then says that another copy is running, and if I put quotes around the path, upon launching it pops open the profile manager which doesn't see this profile, only the (pretty empty) default one. How do I specify this path in the profiles.ini file? I can't afford to have the profile itself stored in a subdirectory of where profiles.ini is (which would have allowed specifying a relative path). Thanks!

All Replies (7)

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Use the profile manager or about:profiles to set up a new profile that points to your old profile data and let Thunderbird worry about how to save the information in the profiles.ini file. Since V68 editing the profiles.ini manually is a very bad idea anyway with downgrade protection.

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@ Matt : Thanks, but I had tried that too, to no avail: Thunderbird did open that location (where I had put a copy of the "old" profile), BUT didn't show any of the preexisting accounts and contents when I opened it. It looked like a new profile.

To make it clear: the "old" profile is an actual profile (which works fine up to now) in the other Windows user account I am trying to migrate to a new Windows user account. I wonder if there is any information in the Thunderbird profiles that is related to the user account.

What I am now forced to do is reenter the Thunderbird accounts one by one, which is a hassle. I will also have to find a way to copy the local files of Thunderbird in the "old" profile to the new one, and not sure yet it will work.

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There was an old bug that might be effecting thing - try rebuilding the global database in that old profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database

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Thanks, but as I had to get on with it, I changed the path of the Documents directory which is on a different partition than the root of my profile (whence the need of absolute paths) so as it be without a space. Then, quite painstainkingly, I recreacted one by one all the accounts (fortunately, they are all IMAP ones), and it works.

The only thing I have to find out now is how to integrate into this account's Thunderbird the local files I had in the old one.

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A bit off topic but I am a new member and can't post a new topic.

I have 3 Thunderbird profiles which I can select from when bringing up the profile manager with thunderbird.exe as my command line

Is there a command line I can use to start one of the profiles directly from my pop-checker? I'm entering thunderbird.exe -P "C:\Users\SERVER\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\workemail.default" but it is bringing up the same profile manager rather than the specific account. What am I doing wrong?

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plasman5 said

A bit off topic but I am a new member and can't post a new topic.

Yes you can go here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new

I have 3 Thunderbird profiles which I can select from when bringing up the profile manager with thunderbird.exe as my command line Is there a command line I can use to start one of the profiles directly from my pop-checker? I'm entering thunderbird.exe -P "C:\Users\SERVER\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\workemail.default" but it is bringing up the same profile manager rather than the specific account. What am I doing wrong?

According to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options

-p uses profile name as a parameter. -profile uses the path to a profile.

You can most things profile related like switch a default profile and launch them from about:profiles which can be fount in the troubleshooting information.

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Matt, Thank you for the information. I got it working! I was trying to use the Profile name that is located at C:\Users\SERVER\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles but I was overthinking it. You simply need to put the name that appears when you run profile manager and put that name in quotes, as in thunderbird.exe -P "Work"

I could not get the -profile "full path" working but the former is much easier...

I appreciate the help very much.