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Moved my profile, The old profile is still in use by Thunderbird 31.6.0

  • 7 cavab
  • 3 have this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by Gnospen

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I am trying to move anything that Thunderbird uses to a different drive to free up room on my primary SSD. I have two email accounts and I use some calendars and the calendar tab in Thunderbird.

Thunderbird V 31.6.0 Windows 7

I moved my profile by copying from the old drive to the new drive and then using profile manager to point Thunderbird to the new profile. When I started Thunderbird back up and tried to rename the old profile folder Thunderbird had it locked. When I close Thunderbird then I can rename the old profile folder.

When I looked at settings in email accounts under Server Settings I see that my two email accounts local directories are pointed to the old location which is inside the old profile folder. I changed those to the new location as well. Still does not release the old profile folder when Thunderbird is running.

It seems that just moving the profile and using the profile manager does not work. Nor does moving the profiles and moving the local directories together.

What do I need to do to get all of what Thunderbird need to run from one drive to another?

I am trying to move anything that Thunderbird uses to a different drive to free up room on my primary SSD. I have two email accounts and I use some calendars and the calendar tab in Thunderbird. Thunderbird V 31.6.0 Windows 7 I moved my profile by copying from the old drive to the new drive and then using profile manager to point Thunderbird to the new profile. When I started Thunderbird back up and tried to rename the old profile folder Thunderbird had it locked. When I close Thunderbird then I can rename the old profile folder. When I looked at settings in email accounts under Server Settings I see that my two email accounts local directories are pointed to the old location which is inside the old profile folder. I changed those to the new location as well. Still does not release the old profile folder when Thunderbird is running. It seems that just moving the profile and using the profile manager does not work. Nor does moving the profiles and moving the local directories together. What do I need to do to get all of what Thunderbird need to run from one drive to another?

All Replies (7)

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Maybe you did this but. First make a backup. When creating a new profile point it to the new directory But dont set anything else up. EXIT TBird! Delete everything INSIDE your new profile Copy /move everything INSIDE your old profile to the new location Start Tbird with profilemaker and delete your old profile. You would still have %appdata% \thunderbird\ profiles.ini But this will (hopefully) point to your new profile

I have two profiles, and my profile.ini looks like

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/ewoxjhii.default

[Profile1] Name=new user IsRelative=0 Path=G:\t-bird Default=1

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I JUST RESOLVED THIS ON MY OWN! I thought about it while eating and remembered that the laptop included my email address in the profile line. I went back to the profile.ini file and appended my email address (which is also the name of a folder in my profile) and restarted TB. IT'S ALL GOOD NOW! Thanks for your time. -- woscar


My computer had to be reloaded from scratch and Windows7 Pro was installed. This has happened twice this year. The first time, I followed directions for "moving a profile' and it worked without using Profile Manager. This time, the new version of Thunderbird (38.2) includes the calendar and I was directed to use Profile Manager. I again copied the files from our laptop using Good Sync (running XP & 38.2) as I did last time and installed them in a Thunderbird Profile folder in a separate partition as I had done last time. I opened Profile Manager and was able to 'Create a New Profile' and selected the path to the new location. When I opened TB the address book worked, but the local folders have disappeared. Today I did a direct copy to a USB drive from the laptop to the desktop. I then opened the 'profiiles.ini folder, following the directions like I did last time. This is what mine shows:

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/uub4tj27.default

[Profile1] Name=Bill Nelson T-bird Profile IsRelative=0 Path=K:\William nelson\Thunderbird Profile

[Profile2] Name=Bill Nelson IsRelative=0 Path=K:\William nelson\Thunderbird Profile Default=1 ___________ The second profile is the one I just created that still doesn't work, but now I have neither the address book nor the folders. What next?

Modified by woscar

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Cant tell whats wrong, BUT a space for windows makes the address end. Like its looking for K:\William

You could try K:\"William nelson\Thunderbird Profile"

Or you could rename your folders to something without a space like: K:\William_Nelson\Thunderbird_Profile

And change it in profiles.ini as well

Modified by Gnospen

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Apparently, the problem was that I needed to point to the folder within the profile that was titled with my email address. On the laptop, that's the name for the entire profile folder. It's working now and I'm planning to fix Firefox yet tonight so that I can also keep its profile in the data partition. It was less trouble than TB so I've been ignoring the fact that my bookmarks, etc. don't work. Thanks for your input! Bill

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Could you tell me how that worked? Did it work with spaces and no "" Was it K:\William nelson\Thunderbird Profile\XXXX@someserver.net ?

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Yes, the spaces in the first two folders remained. I just added my email address after a back slash following the Thunderbird Profile. I haven't had any problems with spaces in file and folder names for the past few versions of Windows. Pretty sure it could have been in Windows 98, but I know that it was fine in XP and now Windows 7 Ultimate. I've been thinking of capitalizing my last name in the top folder, but afraid it might create a mess. The guru that installed the new system did that by mistake.

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Great that it works for you. Spaces is still a problem, I'm on Win7 /64 Open a shortcut to TB and you find it enclosed in citations "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" Without it it won't work, It gives me C:\Program is not accessible It (still) follows the rule that whats after a space is arguments to the program like typing in RUN Thunderbird "Bill Nelson"

(Bill Nelson is in citations or it would be two arguments) 

Try to avoid spaces is my advice

Modified by Gnospen