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How can I restore my old profile on a new computer?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Mitsukatsu

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hello, i wanted to move my old TB profile on my newly installed windows 10. i used the method i saw different places like youtube and also the thunderbird help: username/appdata/roaming/thunderbird and i copied the profiles folder and profiles.ini to my usb stick. after installing my new pc i copied both in the original location.

now, the strange thing is: when i opened thunderbird, it was only partially restored. i had originally 6 mail accounts of which one was complete, including the sub-folders one had lost its sub-folders but the 1500 mails from those were now in the inbox and the other 4 accounts had only the last few mails - most mails were lost, just like all sub-folders and the sent-folder.

i found out when i entered a word into the search-bar all the lost mails showed up again, but only as a preview with a few lines. but when i clicked on the preview i only got an empty overview...

so i have some hope left that these mails aren't completely lost... there are some important mails i need for work. there must be a way to get them back... i saw that other users also have this problem but i didn't see a solution anywhere. i use POP for all my mail-accounts. do you need any more informations?

hello, i wanted to move my old TB profile on my newly installed windows 10. i used the method i saw different places like youtube and also the thunderbird help: username/appdata/roaming/thunderbird and i copied the profiles folder and profiles.ini to my usb stick. after installing my new pc i copied both in the original location. now, the strange thing is: when i opened thunderbird, it was only partially restored. i had originally 6 mail accounts of which one was complete, including the sub-folders one had lost its sub-folders but the 1500 mails from those were now in the inbox and the other 4 accounts had only the last few mails - most mails were lost, just like all sub-folders and the sent-folder. i found out when i entered a word into the search-bar all the lost mails showed up again, but only as a preview with a few lines. but when i clicked on the preview i only got an empty overview... so i have some hope left that these mails aren't completely lost... there are some important mails i need for work. there must be a way to get them back... i saw that other users also have this problem but i didn't see a solution anywhere. i use POP for all my mail-accounts. do you need any more informations?

All Replies (3)

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still haven't found a solution...

but with the help of a friend i got a few mails back. i checked the different folders of my mailaccounts in the mail-folder. there i found a few sub-folders of my previous thunderbird and could restore a few mails from there. but this also worked only with a trick, by moving and renaming one mail-folder-dat into an existing complete folder, and moving the just-appeared content into its original newly created folder in its original. an unsatisfactory work-around but the best we could do...

unfortunately most of the sub-folder files were empty or missing completely.

we also didn't understand that the changes in the user-interface didn't have the expected effect in the profile-folder (i.e. that newly created sub-folders show up)... that's all very mysterious...

i'm starting to losing hope to get back all my important mails.

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Don't you have your original USB copy? Do you have access to the old computer?

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unfortunately i don't have access to my old computer because i installed the new windows on the very same harddisk where thunderbird was before...

i made a profile folder copy on my usb stick where i haven't deleted or changed anything. (i made the changes on another copy on my new desktop).

but i fear that there occured some errors during copying the profile folder in the beginning... not sure...