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lost message filters after upgrading windows 7 to 10

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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

ecs1749
ecs1749
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After I upgraded to Windows 10 from 7, I ended up with an empty list of message filters in Thunderbird. Is there a way to get them back? I've been using Thunderbird for eons and it would be painful to have to recreate all those filters.

Thank you

After I upgraded to Windows 10 from 7, I ended up with an empty list of message filters in Thunderbird. Is there a way to get them back? I've been using Thunderbird for eons and it would be painful to have to recreate all those filters. Thank you

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Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Each mail account would have it's own message filters, but at this point I have no idea whether you simply reinstalled Thunderbird and setup a new IMAP mail account to reconnect to server or whether you manually reinstalled the entire Thunderbird profile folders from a pre made external backup or whether you used the 'windows.old' folder to rescue folders.


You should have a 'windows.old' folder created by Windows OS on the C: drive. It is temporary backup. It should contain this location:

  • C://Users/User Name/Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird/

I would advise you access the 'windows.old' folder - locate the 'Roaming' folder and get a copy of the 'Thunderbird' folder and put it somewhere eg: external drive as a backup. That 'windows.old' folder will only be available for about a month after which Windows OS will auto delete it.

Pop and 'Local Folders' mail accounts are located in the 'Mail' folder: eg: C://Users/User Name/Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile name>/Mail/<pop mail account>

Imap accounts are located in the ImapMail folder: eg: C://Users/User Name/Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile name>/ImapMail/<imap mail account>

In the respective 'mail account' folder this is the name of the file that contains Message Filters: msgFilterRules.dat That file can be copied and pasted into the correct account name folder of the currently used profile.

In Thunderbird you can access current profile:

  • Help > More TRoubleshooting Information
  • Under 'Application Basics' - half way - Profile Folder - click on 'Open Folder' - see image below

A new window opens showing the contents of your current profile name folder.

  • Exit Thunderbird now - this is important.
  • For POP: click on 'Mail' folder
  • For IMAP: click on 'ImapMail' folder
  • Click on the mail account folder to see contents.

You will see a 'msgFilterRules.dat' file at this point it is likely to be empty because you have no filters set up.

  • Delete that empty 'msgFilterRules.dat' file or temporarilly put on desktop - you can delete later.
  • Then paste in the copied 'msgFilterRules.dat' file which you retrieved from the 'windows.old' Thunderbird folder.

Repeat the copy paste of 'msgFilterRules.dat' for each account.

Note: you should make sure it is being copied from and pasted into the correct account name folder. If you get it wrong - do not panic, you can repeat this process to access the profile and try again. You can open 'msgFilterRules.dat' using rigth click and 'open with' - select Notepad text program to check what filters it contains.