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Why does Local Folders\msgFilterRules.dat gets recreated (from where?) when Thunderbird is restarted

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I have followed the instructions for hand editing msgFilterRules.dat repeatedly, having exited out of Thunderbird first, but when I restart Tbird I see the old state of the file instantly recreated. Very frustrating. I've searched all of C:\Users\Gary\AppData for any msgFilterRules.dat, and the only other one is the one for my main account (named for my server name/domain), and it's not copying that one. It's clearly reinstating a copy of what it was before.

So all the previously-posted advice about how to copy filters, etc., is quite useless for me, if I want to copy from my main account to Local Folders.

I have followed the instructions for hand editing msgFilterRules.dat repeatedly, having exited out of Thunderbird first, but when I restart Tbird I see the old state of the file instantly recreated. Very frustrating. I've searched all of C:\Users\Gary\AppData for any msgFilterRules.dat, and the only other one is the one for my main account (named for my server name/domain), and it's not copying that one. It's clearly reinstating a copy of what it was before. So all the previously-posted advice about how to copy filters, etc., is quite useless for me, if I want to copy from my main account to Local Folders.

Chosen solution

I solved this myself. It was happening because, while I quit Tbird main application, I had a draft message open. When I quit that, things behaved normally (my Local Folder/msgFilterRules.dat changes were not preempted when I relaunched Tbird application).

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Chosen Solution

I solved this myself. It was happening because, while I quit Tbird main application, I had a draft message open. When I quit that, things behaved normally (my Local Folder/msgFilterRules.dat changes were not preempted when I relaunched Tbird application).