Move your profile using Profile Manager, or Help/Troubleshooting, about:profiles.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder_-_Thunderbird (Google cached version)

Yes you can. Simply Quit Thunderbird, move its profile folder to your desired location then start Thunderbird's Profile Manager, create a new profile and set it to use the moved profile folder in its new location. See Profile Manager - Create and remove Thunderbird profiles

Thank you for your reply. I have read your recommended article several times and am sorry to say that it is not making sense to me so far in respect of what I am trying to do so will appreciate some clarification please.

I see that I have two profile folders relating to Thunderbird on my PC:

C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles

C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

Do I move them both to the new location of <C:\Thunderbird> please? Would this not have two files with the same name in the same location?

Once this is clear, I think I should be able to move on to the next stage.

Regards and TIA

Phil

See this article again Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data

Thanks for your message but I'm sorry to say that I'm having a lot of difficulty with this. With Thunderbird closed I have backed up my folder C:\users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\*.* and copied it to a new folder called C:\Thunderbird. I have opened the profile manager as instructed, created a new profile, clicked on the Choose Folder button and navigated to C:\Thunderbird, then clicked Finish. I then clicked Start Thunderbird but after a few seconds, the program starts but wants me to set up a completely new account rather than recover the existing account (which is what I was expecting). I'm obviously doing something wrong so will appreciate your further guidance please. Regards Phil

Your profile folder, as per the article, is named something like abcdefgh.default and is found inside C:\users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles. The full path to your profile folder, therefore, should be something like C:\users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\abcdefgh.default. After you copy it to its new location, its new path should be like C:\Thunderbird\abcdefgh.default. This is the path that you should point to when you click the Choose Folder button in the Profile Manager. Don't just point it to C:\Thunderbird, point it to the ACTUAL PROFILE FOLDER that is named according to the convention stated in the article:

Each profile is stored on your hard drive in a profile folder. The folder is named using the following convention: <random_string>.<profile_name> ...where "<random_string>" is eight digits randomly generated by Thunderbird and "<profile_name>" is the name you assigned to the profile. <\blockquote>

Many thanks for the additional. I have now managed to get this confiured as I want it. I do consider myself reasonably computer literate but I don't think that I would have solved this problem purely by reading the articles that you recommended. Regards and thanks again Phil

Hi again. Having used the new set up for a few days, may I please ask a few follow up questions? Please see the attached screen shot <Thunderbird-page0001.jpg>, which shows the content of my <C:\Thunderbird> folder. You will see that it includes a folder called <qpqlfjsy.default>, which is the location of my various Thunderbird files and which was last updated earlier today. The question is: can I safely delete the other files / sub-folders shown in order to save disk space. I have tried to upload a second screen shot but it appears that I can only upload one image at a time. This image shows the content of the <C:\Thunderbird\Profiles> folder and contains six different Thunderbird generated profiles, including <qpqlfjsy.default>. This particular folder has not been updated since 9th October at 19.05. Two of the other folders appear to be empty apart from a file called <times.json>, the others to hold a number of Thunderbird files. The question is: can I safely delete all of these profiles please, again in order to save disk space. Finally, now that I have the new configuration working properly, can I delete the content of my C:\users\[user]\AppData\ Roaming\Thunderbird and C:\users\[user]\AppData\Local\Thunderbird folders, again to save disk space. Regards and TIA Phil

Hi again. Having used the new set up for a few days, may I please ask a few follow up questions? Please see the attached screen shot <Thunderbird-page0001.jpg>, which shows the content of my <C:\Thunderbird> folder. You will see that it includes a folder called <qpqlfjsy.default>, which is the location of my various Thunderbird files and which was last updated earlier today. The question is: can I safely delete the other files / sub-folders shown in order to save disk space.

Yes.

I have tried to upload a second screen shot but it appears that I can only upload one image at a time. This image shows the content of the <C:\Thunderbird\Profiles> folder and contains six different Thunderbird generated profiles, including <qpqlfjsy.default>. This particular folder has not been updated since 9th October at 19.05. Two of the other folders appear to be empty apart from a file called <times.json>, the others to hold a number of Thunderbird files. The question is: can I safely delete all of these profiles please, again in order to save disk space.

If you do as per your first question above, the C:\Thunderbird\Profiles folder and everything inside it will also be deleted, so yes. Also, you can upload/add more than one screenshot to a single post, but only one image at a time. Simply repeat the same process for each additional image.

Finally, now that I have the new configuration working properly, can I delete the content of my C:\users\[user]\AppData\ Roaming\Thunderbird

NO. There are other files in that folder that Thunderbird needs. You can, however, delete everything from the C:\users\[user]\AppData\ Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles folder, where the original copy of your profile folder is. The final size of the C:\users\[user]\AppData\ Roaming\Thunderbird folder should be too small to worry about.

and C:\users\[user]\AppData\Local\Thunderbird folders, again to save disk space.

NO, no need. Thunderbird uses this for temporary caches and it shouldn't be too big to cause any storage concerns. You could delete everything here, but they'll just get recreated when you run Thunderbird, so there's no point, UNLESS it's occupying huge swathes of storage space, then that is an anomaly that needs to be addressed.

Thanks again for a very comprehensive reply. I have deleted those files as you recommend and all seems to be well. FWIW, I seem to have saved about 10GB of disk space. :-)

I don't understand why the second image would not upload. All that happened was that I got a revolving circle.

Regards

Phil