How to migrate Thunderbird profile from snap to flatpak?
I was pleased to see that Mozilla has finally set up an official way to distribute Thunderbird using flatpak. This made me want to migrate from snap to flatpak. Unfortunately, I cannot get the migration to work smoothly.
What is the recommended way to migrate a Thunderbird profile?
I have tried Tools > Export to export the profile to a zip file and then importing it in flatpak version of Thunderbird. This asked to authenticate each account again and it started messing with the folder structure by creating duplicates of every existent folder, so I had to discard this option.
The second thing I have tried is to: 1. Copy over the profile to flatpak profile directory: $HOME/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/cache/thunderbird/ 2. Start the application with -P option. 3. Create a profile and specify the path of the profile.
The second option started fetching messages from many years ago and I could even see a bunch of emails with dates 1970-... (I think, can't remember exactly).
Do you have any ideas what to do to migrate the data without the need to clean up anything or reconfigure any settings?
Solution choisie
As you suggested, I have retried the specified -P method again and just let it synchronise for a longer time. Then I clicked through all of the mailbox folders and each time it refreshed things again. Eventually, the old folders and the weird 1970s folders in the inbox disappeared and I had only the expected items in the inbox just as they were before the migration. So, this method seems to work, it just needs a bit of patience.
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Hello there! It's great to hear you're exploring Thunderbird's flatpak version. Migrating your Thunderbird profile can be a bit tricky, but don't worry, I've got you covered! Instead of using the export/import method, try these steps: First, copy your profile to the flatpak profile directory, usually located at $HOME/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/cache/thunderbird/. Then, launch Thunderbird using the -P option to create a new profile and specify the path of your copied profile. Remember, you might encounter some old messages popping up – those 1970 ones – but don't fret, it's just Thunderbird catching up. If you run into any issues, you can always clean up your old profile data manually.
Solution choisie
As you suggested, I have retried the specified -P method again and just let it synchronise for a longer time. Then I clicked through all of the mailbox folders and each time it refreshed things again. Eventually, the old folders and the weird 1970s folders in the inbox disappeared and I had only the expected items in the inbox just as they were before the migration. So, this method seems to work, it just needs a bit of patience.