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how do i repair thunderbird without losing my data

  • 2 replies
  • 3 have this problem
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  • Last reply by lobdillj

shakeysteve
shakeysteve
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Mozilla support pages, it says that you can re-install thunderbird without losing any data but when I did, I lost almost all my emails, all of my folders and my entire address book. They should be on my drive. How do I find them and re-connect them to thunderbird? Thanks.

Mozilla support pages, it says that you can re-install thunderbird without losing any data but when I did, I lost almost all my emails, all of my folders and my entire address book. They should be on my drive. How do I find them and re-connect them to thunderbird? Thanks.

All Replies (2)

Tonnes
Tonnes
  • Locale Leader
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Hello,

I’m sorry to hear this, bust most likely, your email is not lost.

Did you say almost all, so you do see some emails? If not (i.e. if you don’t see any familiar content), Thunderbird may have trouble finding your existing profile and may have created a new one, hence you won’t find any familiar content.

  • Did you take some action to clean up Thunderbird related data after uninstalling it and before the reinstall?
  • Did Thunderbird ask you to create a new profile during the reinstall?

Can you have a look at the Profiles (1) and Using multiple profiles (2) articles and:

  • Check what profile is currently used if you start Thunderbird (see "How to find your profile" in 1)
  • Check if you see one or more profile folders on the location mentioned under "Profile Location Summary" (type "%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\" in the Windows Run dialog opened Windows key + R, without the quotes)?

If you find a profile folder, the first thing you should do is make a backup of that folder, or the folder called "Profiles" above them if there are more than one, just in case. After that, you can find the profile you need by checking the timestamps of their files (if you found more than one profile, otherwise it will just be the one ending with .default), and then try to fix the location(s) the Profile manager uses to start Thunderbird so that the old profile is started (see 2).

Please report back to let us know how it goes.

lobdillj
lobdillj
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Suddenly after installing a recommended MacOS update, my Thunderbird app began failing to open a proper functioning window when I wanted to reply to a message. I got a blank window (white) with a black left panel. There was no banner with control options at the top of the page. I have to Force Quit the app and restart it to get back to my Inbox.

What should I do?