How do I restore my profile i saved before I reformatted. Profile was just copied, no backup software was used.
I had a virus and had to reformat. I quickly copied my profiles folder to my data drive. I copied it from the C:\Users\Nancy\AppData\Local\Thunderbird area not C:\Users\Nancy\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird. I have tried copying it back renaming it, installing then just renaming and copying over. I've edited the profile.ini folder. I've even tried just importing. I can find no way to get my data back. It is there, over 6 thousand files. I really need my contact info. I can't believe this is harder than restoring Outlook. I've installed/uninstalled thunderbird 3 times. Using thunderbird 31.2 but not sure about the profile data. It was recently updated just not sure if it was 31.2.
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re: I can't believe this is harder than restoring Outlook. I've installed/uninstalled thunderbird 3 times.
Installing/uninstalling Thunderbird has nothing to do with your issue. The main reason could be that you did not copy the correct folders and files.
Thunderbird stores Profiles here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird Which in your case will be here: C:\Users\Nancy\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird. This is where all your Profile data is stored, emails, address books, filters etc etc.
re: C:\Users\Nancy\AppData\Local\Thunderbird This is usually just used by Windows as a cache; AppData\Local\ is used to hold Temp files. Maybe, you deliberately moved the original profile using the Profile Manager to store everything in a different location and not use the auto default which Thunderbird auto sets up. Suggest you check the files in this location : C:\Users\Nancy\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\Profile name
To confirm you actually have saved the correct folder. Please supply some images. Here are some examples showing Thunderbird Profile folder and mail account folders showing the files and folders they would contain. The first image shows an example of what files and folders will be shown in the Profile folder. eg: 'Mail' if you used an IMAP mail account then you would also see an 'ImapMail' folder. 'abook.mab' = Personal Address Book
Paste an image of what you can see in your '\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\Profile name' folder.
If you had any Pop mail accounts or emails stored in 'Local Folders', then the emails will be stored in Thunderbird under the 'Mail' folder. Click on 'Mail' folder and select the mail account. the second image below shows an example of the contents of a Pop mail account.
If you used an IMAP mail account and synchronised subscribed folders to get a local copy, then these emails will be located under \ImapMail\mail account name. However, if you use IMAP then all the emails are kept on the server, so you only need to create a new exisitng mail account and make sure you set up Server Type: IMAP. Then connect to all mail stored on server.
Each file containing emails is an mbox file with no extension. It will also have another file of same name with .msf extension - these do not contain emails they are indexing files. you can open eg: Inbox using 'Notepad' all emails are listed in the order they were downloaded. Each email will start with lines like this: eg: From - Wed Nov 21 12:21:56 2012 X-Account-Key: account3 X-UIDL: UID2168-1224250522 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Do you see those files and when opened do you see all the emails?
