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Moving Profile from Win7 to Linux Mint 17.3 fails - eMail Addresses and account info moves successfully, but not email or filters. Latest Tbird Ver. Help!

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  • Last reply by tonycooper

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I am moving from Win 7 to Linux Mint 17.3. Both versions of Thunderbird are at 38.5.1. I have been unsuccessful in migrating my profile to the new Linux build. I have followed the instructions on this site ... and on several other to the letter. The result is account info and addresses migrate, but no eMail shows up within Thunderbird. Filters are also missing. The data is there (3.8GB of if), but the only folders that show are those of basic build. I have 2 email accounts in the profile, the first one shows Inbox and Trash, the 2nd one shows Inbox, Trash, and Outbox. All empty. I can send / receive email from the client fine.

I then tried to use the 3rd party Import/ExportTools addon. I exported the profile from Win7, then imported it into the Linux build. Started Thunderbird and found the same issue. Any help will be appreciated.

Kindest Regards, Tony Cooper

I am moving from Win 7 to Linux Mint 17.3. Both versions of Thunderbird are at 38.5.1. I have been unsuccessful in migrating my profile to the new Linux build. I have followed the instructions on this site ... and on several other to the letter. The result is account info and addresses migrate, but no eMail shows up within Thunderbird. Filters are also missing. The data is there (3.8GB of if), but the only folders that show are those of basic build. I have 2 email accounts in the profile, the first one shows Inbox and Trash, the 2nd one shows Inbox, Trash, and Outbox. All empty. I can send / receive email from the client fine. I then tried to use the 3rd party Import/ExportTools addon. I exported the profile from Win7, then imported it into the Linux build. Started Thunderbird and found the same issue. Any help will be appreciated. Kindest Regards, Tony Cooper

Chosen solution

Matt,

I am up and running! You got me looking in the right direction to find the problem. It was indeed in the mail file location. I found the correct profile ( with the identical name ) in the roaming sub-directory on my F: drive... moved it over to a USB drive. Deleted all profiles from my Linux laptop, opened up Thunderbird to create a dummy profile, changed the name to my XXXXXXX.default file, then went to Thunderbird and set the mail directory correctly...

This was the last major hurdle to jump before moving the family systems Linux Mint. Took all of 10 minutes...

Thank you for the help!

Tony

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Are you using dual boot? is there any odd locations, like mail stored on the F: drive. Usually these sort of issues arise with installations that have been customized with regard to the location of files.

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Hello Matt,

First, Thank you for responding... Second, You are very good! And I am NOT kidding here!

4 years ago when I setup Win7 I set the temp files to point to F:\. I had a rather small SSD and was worried about filling it up. There are two directories on the F: drive... Win7AppData and Win7Temp Files.

The profile I need is on this F: drive under \Win7App Data\Mozilla Thunderbird\Profiles\8bjklwc8.default

It was last modified on 1/5/2014 and contains 3.28 GB of data

There is also a \Roaming folder with a Profile.ini for the above profile under under \Win7App Data\Mozilla Thunderbird.

So how do I migrate this data successfully to another instance of TBird running under Linux MInt 17.3?

(I have hope again!)

Kindest Regards,

Tony

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In your copied profile, go to the account settings under I think Edit on Linux. in the account name (above server settings) select the local directory to point to the relevant account folder. When you set the path correctly, the mail from that location should appear in the folder tree and the rest of the user interface.

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Chosen Solution

Matt,

I am up and running! You got me looking in the right direction to find the problem. It was indeed in the mail file location. I found the correct profile ( with the identical name ) in the roaming sub-directory on my F: drive... moved it over to a USB drive. Deleted all profiles from my Linux laptop, opened up Thunderbird to create a dummy profile, changed the name to my XXXXXXX.default file, then went to Thunderbird and set the mail directory correctly...

This was the last major hurdle to jump before moving the family systems Linux Mint. Took all of 10 minutes...

Thank you for the help!

Tony