There is not an option, there is an add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

To install https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

However the best backups include the entire profile so you get your contact and account settings and passwords. Backup up of the folder tree is fairly simple once you know where it is located. You can determine this by clicking on the help > troubleshooting information and selecting the show button for the profile. This will open a file manager window in the correct location. Alternatively you can set up the backup option in the settings for the importexport tools.

Note that any backup really requires Thunderbird to be not running.

I already have the version 3.2.4.1 of the import export tool. The web page says there is a later version, but if I go to the web page Firefox indicates the site is harmful, so I stop.

The import export tool is configured to do a complete backup every 30 days. What I was interested in is backing up my local folders more often. I figured all the other emails would be on the server. I found the path to my local folder and thought I could just back that folder up and hopefully import it if I had a problem. Do you have any suggestions or is this not possible?

I have included a screen shot of my settings in the schedule.

See if this makes sense to you.

I have the import export tool configured to backup every 30 days. I figured that doing that I could loose no more than 30 days worth of emails.

I have a program that will backup anything I configure automatically. I configured this to backup the Thunderbird profile when I shut my PC down. That way Thunderbird is not running. The backup started taking so long that the PC would not shutdown. So I figured that all I really wanted were the local folders. I did not realize I was accessing the import export tool when I right clicked on the folder. So what I was thinking about doing is copying that path, via my program, when I shut the PC down. I know I can see the emails even though they are not formatted. I was hoping I could import this if I had a problem. Is this possible?

Ok I am assuming you are reasonably happy working with files and folders. SO I tell this story an assume you have the skills to make sore you are no the same victim of ignorance I was.

Like you I was having backup issues with it taking an age. I never looked at the actual size of the profile until the backups started being a problem and when I did I was shocked.

I like just about every windows user has ticked the box the first time I ran Thunderbird to allow windows search integration. What I did not realize was in doing so I duplicated (OR almost) my email store. Window search requires the email to be in text files to search and index it. Thunderbird stores mail in mbox files. MBOX files are text based, but apparently for reasons I do not understand Thunderbird's developers chose to create a separate text file for each email in the message store. This file contains all of the text of the email, but none of the attachments and is stored in the profile folder with a mozeml file extension. I had over 100,00 of these mozeml files and I never searched my mail using Windows search. I use the internal search for searching my email.

So I quickly changed the setting in options, then I found that changing the setting does not remove the files already created, so I had to manually delete all the mozmsg folders and mozeml files. The saving in my case was gigabytes of space. No wonder the backup was choking. W those few changes I reduced the size of the profile by about half, the files in the profile were reduced by some 100,000 and obviously backups got a lot faster.and stopped being a PITA.

I checked and the option is not set in my installation of Thunderbird.

My profile file is larger than 3GB.

I have three imap accounts.

I use a program to backup my profile when I shut the PC down. Since I will exit Thunderbird, prior to shutting down the PC, the program will be down.

My backup program has the option to exclude files or folders. I decided to exclude the imapMail folder. This changed the size of my backup from 3GB to 1GB, plus the program will only backup files that have changed.

So if I have a problem and need to restore my local folders am I going to be able to accomplish this from my backup.

I am not sure what all of the options in the add-on do. Since Thunderbird must be down prior to any backup I don't see any way to use that add-on to backup Thunderbird with the exception of the automatic backup.

I do have the ImportExportTools add-on installed.