Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Problems transferring thunderbird to a new computer

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by david

admin549
admin549
more options

Hello everyone.

My old computer died, but luckily my files including Thunderbird ones were backed up.

I've tried to move my data to my new computer following the instructions detailed here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer

It all seemed to work until I opened Thunderbird. I am now getting the error message: "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

Does anyone have any suggestions? I've got some important emails in there so would really apreciate any help.

Thank you!

Hello everyone. My old computer died, but luckily my files including Thunderbird ones were backed up. I've tried to move my data to my new computer following the instructions detailed here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/moving-thunderbird-data-to-a-new-computer It all seemed to work until I opened Thunderbird. I am now getting the error message: "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." Does anyone have any suggestions? I've got some important emails in there so would really apreciate any help. Thank you!

All Replies (1)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

I never liked those instructions, as "counting up 3" can be easily misunderstood. Here is where you are: - your profiles.ini file is pointing to what it thinks is your profile, but it's not there. So, TB terminates. Easy to fix. If you're handy with twiddling with ini files, you could read it in Notepad and fix it, assuming you know the profile name. OR, the safest approach is to locate the profiles.ini file in c:\users\yourID\appdata\roaming\thunderbird and delete it. Restart TB and it will prompt for email id. Skip that and click 'home' tab and then right-click near top and activate 'menu bar' - Now, click help>moretroubleshootinginformation and scroll down to Profiles. Click 'about:profiles' and your profile 'might' be viewable, depending on where you placed it. If so, activate it. If not there, then click the 'create profile' button and in two steps: 1- create a name, such as MYPROFILE, and then the second step: click the browse button to locate and select your profile.