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Computer crashed, trying to recover lost mail and address book

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  • Last reply by Matt

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My old computer died, I now have a new one. I've recovered the *.default folder from the old hard disk, but not sure how to use it in respect of a newly installed Thunderbird client on my new computer. I'd like to be able to recover my address book at least, but also old mail if possible. There's hardly anything in my new client at the moment, so one-for-one replacement wouldn't be the worst solution.

My old computer died, I now have a new one. I've recovered the *.default folder from the old hard disk, but not sure how to use it in respect of a newly installed Thunderbird client on my new computer. I'd like to be able to recover my address book at least, but also old mail if possible. There's hardly anything in my new client at the moment, so one-for-one replacement wouldn't be the worst solution.

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Matt, thanks for the response. The page you pointed to didn't help directly, it seemed to be referring to a much older version of Thunderbird? In any case, it did push me back to something I'd tried earlier and failed, with the nett result that I now have my old mail back. So, thanks to you for taking the time to answer, and thanks again for pushing me in the right direction.

For the record; I set up a dummy mail account, and located it's Mail folder in the ********.default location, then copied into that folder all the contents of the equivalent folder on my old hard drive. Next time I started Thunderbird all the old mail appeared under the dummy account. Result!  :-)

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Pleased you got it working,

Couple of points The link applies equally to the current version as V1. This stuff has never changed. One of the reasons Thunderbird versions do not get mentioned there.

The other point is what you did in the end, is essentially the same as you would have achieved using the profile manager.

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