Depends what you want to do with them, guess you could restore them under a different profile so you can view them (and don't disrupt each other).

If you goto the menu Tools -> Import -> then follow the wizard to import mail it should just add a separate folder for the old e-mails..

Hi. Thanks very much for replying. I just tried this but, when I do this and select the folder the profile is in, it gives me the message 'Mail was successfully imported from Outlook Express - No messages were found to import' and doesn't seem to be importing anything. (I've tried going up and down the subdirectories.)

If you have any other ideas I'd really appreciate it. Having them in a separate folder should be OK, as long as I can read them.

Tools|Import is for retrieving data from other clients. It doesn't import Thunderbird data.

This add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

will allow you to import data from your old profile.

Hi, Zenos, thank you so much for answering. I've just been trying this. I used the menu item 'Import all messages from a directory/also from its subdirectories' and selected the folder that I'd saved from my old computer with the profile settings. Thunderbird said it was importing messages, but I can't see any new ones. Any idea where they would be? Or have I saved completely the wrong folder to start with (I saved the one as per instructions on transferring e-mail from one computer to another)?

Thank you for your help.

You need to import into an account that stores its messages locally, that is, the Local Folders account in Thunderbird, or in an account that uses POP. You can't import into an IMAP-connected account.

When you run this add-on, you need to start off in the folder where you want the imported messages to appear. After they have imported, you can set about moving them to where you really want them.

OK. I just imported the directory and now I have a bunch of folders in there, but nothing happens when I click on the ones that look as though they should have the e-mails in them (i.e. they don't list e-mails in the main window). Any idea what I should do now?

Have to switch off for the night now so won't be able to reply to anything tonight, but will check again for messages tomorrow. Thanks very much again for your help.

After reading and trying a great deal of stuff and going through a considerable learning curve, I eventually solved this.

The problem turned out to be that the e-mails from my old computer weren't saving correctly. I still have no idea why this was because I was copying the profile from my old computer exactly as advised, but for some reason the folders in the profile that should have contained the e-mails were registering as empty.

However, the Local Folders folder on my old computer *was* getting properly copied over. So I figured out a way round the problem: On the old computer, I set up new subfolders within the Local Folders folder (right click on 'Local Folders' and then chose 'New Folder' from menu) and copied all of my old e-mails into them. (I used four new folders, so I could copy the inbox and outbox from each of two main accounts I wanted to save.) Then I recopied the profile onto USB. This gave me folders from which I*could* copy my old e-mail onto the new computer. Bit roundabout but it worked, so I'm happy!