We discourage less than full profile copies. Settings contain paths, some absolute and simply copying them without the corresponding folders and data is asking for trouble.The settings for instance contain the path to your accounts mail in Thunderbird that path will or may not be the same on any other install. So the settings will not "just transfer"

Matt said

We discourage less than full profile copies. Settings contain paths, some absolute and simply copying them without the corresponding folders and data is asking for trouble.The settings for instance contain the path to your accounts mail in Thunderbird that path will or may not be the same on any other install. So the settings will not "just transfer"

Thank you for your input.

This is I have been doing, which talks a lot of time. I manually creating a profile manually by going through the settings menu and settings. It has always worked without bringing over the thousands of Emails that accumulate on the computer. I don't need them on the computer since I'm using Imap and the emails are on the server. I even try to configure the system so as not to download any of the emails, just the headers of the selected Imap folder.

There are other personal settings that I spend hours configuring on each computer. But hopefully this can clarify my objective. Since having only those settings on the new computer always works fine, is there a way to get those settings, or save those settings, so that I can bring those settings to a new computer without spending hours going thought the menus each time.

By the way, before I can get the new settings completely filled out the email starts to downloading to the local computer. I have to exit Thunderbird after configuring the profile not to keep emails on this computer. Then go back into Thunderbird and proceed to configure it.

Some of the main settings needed for a new computer:

• Mail Servers
• User name
• Email Address
• Server Settings: Check Messages every 5 minutes
• Server Settings: Allow immediate server notification
• Server Settings: Move Deleted messages to "Trash on username@server"
• Copies & Folders: Place a copy of Sent to "
• Copies & Folders: Archive folder "Archives on user@server"
• Copies & Folders: "Drafts on user@server"
• Copies & Folders: "Templates on user@server"
• Copies & Folders: "Sent Items on user@server"
• Junk Settings: Do not automatically mark mail as junk if sender is in Personal Address Book
• Junk Settings: Move new junk messages to "Junk on user@server"
• Synchronization & Storage: Uncheck Keep messages for this account on this computer
• Synchronization & Storage: Don't delete any messages
• Preference: Uncheck Message Pane
• Advance Preference: Open messages in "A new message window"

What I'm trying to figure out is a way to migrate the settings structure to a new computer without bringing the emails that I prefer not to be downloaded "as per the uncheck keep messages on this computer... which works after exiting Thunderbird and restarting Thunderbird. In other words, all the messages stored on the server don't have to be on stored each individual computer.

Since, as you mentioned, the copy profile isn't available. Do you (or anyone else) know of an alternative workaround?

Update: I had Folder Pane where I meant to have Message Pane. Simple mistakes like this is the reason for trying to get a way to export the settings and get it right every time. Also a big concern is that the settings gets very fine tuned with time. It's hard to get that perfect settings configuration. Something is always being missed. Idealistically I'll find a way to get the settings I've been using for a couple of years that is perfect. I don't want the thousands of messages on my new computer, or any of my new profiles... just the perfect settings configuration.

-- L. James

-- L. D. James ljames@apollo3.com www.apollo3.com/~ljames

Why don't you simply create a kind of template profile with all the accounts, but without the actual messages?

Make sure you don't accidentally delete messages while being online, which would then also delete them from the server in case of an IMAP account. A full profile backup is highly recommended. That also includes an offline copy on the local disc for IMAP accounts.

christ1 said

Why don't you simply create a kind of template profile with all the accounts, but without the actual messages? Make sure you don't accidentally delete messages while being online, which would then also delete them from the server in case of an IMAP account. A full profile backup is highly recommended. That also includes an offline copy on the local disc for IMAP accounts.

Thanks, Christ1, for the valuable workaround. This is what I did when creating a new profile for the details of my last message. It unavoidably downloaded 18000 messages during the process of creating the profile/template. The template is a 14meg bz2 archive.

I marked your message as useful. There is a chance that someone else may have tackled and developed a solution to this effort and might provide a something better. Even the developers might see something main configuration setting to achieve this, or might consider actually adding a feature for it.

Currently I'm exploring the all the files that appear to have customized settings that the "thunderbird -profilemanager" might read and save time when creating a new profile.

Note: By the way, the files size grows each time I discover a settings that I forgot to include in the template and go back to the backup and add the setting. It starts downloading new messages just to make a change.

-- L. James

-- L. D. James ljames@apollo3.com www.apollo3.com/~ljames

I don't get it. If you have indeed set up Thunderbird not to download messages then there shouldn't be any messages in your profile, and your settings should prevent any further downloading of messages, so I can't see what's wrong with copying your allegedly mean lean profile.

Zenos said

I don't get it. If you have indeed set up Thunderbird not to download messages then there shouldn't be any messages in your profile, and your settings should prevent any further downloading of messages, so I can't see what's wrong with copying your allegedly mean lean profile.

Hi, Zenos.

Since are suggesting that I might be missing something, I'll explore a way to create a profile without downloading messages. But so far I can't. I gave a description about of what I did to create the profile. I used the thunderbird -profilemanager to create the profile. The system won't allow the profile to be created without entering the username and password, which it will test and start downloading message as soon as you enter the correct credentials.

Once you have it created and, of course after having downloaded messages that you prefer not to have in the profile, there is still the task of setting up the folders. You can't assign the folders without logging it, which when you do, it'll download messages while you are assigning the folders.

The workaround is as best as I can get it for now. But it isn't possible to do it without downloading email, as far as I can see. If you know of a way to get the settings without downloading emails I'd really appreciate you sharing it.

I understand that I might be missing something. This is why I posted the question in the first place. I can't figure out how to do it.

Thanks for explaining that you feel there is a way. Thanks in advance for any considerations to share the steps to actually do it.

-- L. James

-- L. D. James ljames@apollo3.com www.apollo3.com/~ljames

Have you tried this?

1. Copy the entire profile folder to another location and rename it. 2. In the copy, manually delete all the e-mail files from under "ImapMail" and "Mail" folders. 3. Create a new Thunderbird profile, not pointing to the copied profile. 4. Run Thunderbird with that profile, then quit Thunderbird. 5. Delete all the files from that new profile, and copy in the contents of the new template profile.