Ok, I'll try. It seems your main problem was solving the problem with Windows, not Thunderbird. Here are the basics, in case you do this again. When TB starts, it looks at the profiles.ini file on C drive, which is a text file that tells it where the profile is. Solving your problem can be done by moving the profile, or by moving the account. I prefer moving the account because that is easiest to explain - and it's the account that uses all that disc space. If you still have the original profile, this can be easy. If you've corrupted it, we'll have to slowly work through it. I will assume here that you can reconstruct the original profile. - exit TB - locate account in profile under Mail\<accountname> and copy to the D drive. - start tb, and click the account settings page - at bottom, for local directory, click the browse button to locate and select the account folder on D drive. - exit and restart TB and verify that all is ok - if all is well, click in windows file explorer to the Mail<accountfolder> in profile and delete the account folder as it is no longer used.

Your other approach is to move the original profile to another drive. Do that with TB not running. Then start profile manager (windowskey plus 'r' key and enter thunderbird.exe -p then select 'create profile' then next then enter a profile name and then click the browse button to locate and select your profile.

Thanks, David. I tried your advice, but I couldn't get past step one! If I look at the profile in C:, there are only 2 folders in the Mail folder. One is "Local Folders" and the second one is "smart mailboxes-1." I could not find anything there related to "account" or "accountname" or my own username.

Then, since I had already copied all the files over to D:, I looked in there under Mail. There are 4 folders: Local Folders, mail.comcast.net, smart mailboxes, and smart mailboxes-1.

I must have corrupted the file somehow.

Any thoughts?

Possibly my misunderstanding. I assumed you were using POP accounts, which typically appear in the Mail folder, whereas IMAP accounts appear in the Imapmail folder.

Hi David. First of all, thanks again for working with me.

With your help I have been able to recover all my files. I am still confused about a few things, and maybe you can help me to understand what's going on. After your previous message I looked into the difference between the IMAP and POP message delivery modes. The Settings tab in my TB file says the system is using the IMAP mode. However, there is a Local Folders sub-setting and that's where I found all my files. So, as I understand it, Comcast delivers messages to me via IMAP and right into my Local Folders Inbox. I presume the messages are then removed from the Comcast server to free up their storage space. But, that seems to me to fit the definition of a POP mode, so it's a bit confusing to me. Nevertheless, it appears that my TB program has now recovered and should work just fine.

However, I do have at least one remaining issue. The previous messages that were UNREAD, but were filtered out by my Message Filters and were immediately deleted, were apparently stored on the Comcast server until they actually do delete them (looks like 2 months because the oldest one is dated 8/7/23). Since I opened up a new TB account yesterday, per TB's recommendation, these messages have now shown up as UNREAD messages in the Comcast parent inbox, apparently waiting for me to read them. Previously, they would have been delivered to my Local Folders Inbox, where all my mail shows up, and would have immediately been filtered out (deleted). So, I don't understand what's going on with that. There are over 3,000 messages of this type that are sitting in that inbox. Related to this, is there some way I can apply my Message Filters to wipe these all out?

And, hopefully the final issue that I have to resolve is that TB has changed the way my screen is laid out. There are now 3 vertical columns. On the left is the familiar tree showing all the folders, which was there previously, but now there is a column in the middle that shows all the messages in a format that is not what I had previously, and then on the right is the selected message. What I had previously was a simple listing of the messages on the upper half and the selected message opened up down below. Why would TB change this? I suspect this was done during the most recent update, which occurred on Thursday, if I recall.

And, as a final thought, once the dust has settled, I wonder if my setup with parent file folders and then local file folders is the normal way of setting up a TB directory. It seems redundant to me in some respects. And I wonder what I should have done to move my TB files off my C: drive instead of the simple Copy and Paste, which didn't work.

Thanks again, David, for steering me in the right direction. I'm not 100% there, but at least I can get to all my files!

Tom.

Hi again David,

More trouble. I just now noticed my Address Book is empty. I'm hoping it's still somewhere on my pc!

Tom.

On IMAP/POP, you can verify IMAP by logging on to the comcast server. My guess is the messages are still there unless you deleted them. Click to account settings and then click server settings and look at bottom line that shows folder assigned. It may be that, for whatever reason, the account was defined in the Local Folders folder. That should be confirmed to lay this to rest.

ON the unwanted messages, creating a filter should do it. Or just highlight in batches and delete.

ON layout, click view>layout>classic view

On the missing addressbook, you did say that you deleted a profile, and that may have done it. All I can suggest is to do a search on PC for a file named abook.sqlite. If you find it, you can use tools>import to restore it.

Back again David. Thanks for the tip on getting back to the classic view. That helps.

I still have 2 major problems to resolve.

(1) I know my files exist, because I've seen them in Explorer. I just can't configure TB to get to them.

(2) My address book is empty. I found the abook.sqlite file and it seems to be intact and in the right place, but the address book stays empty. It is strange, because at one point earlier today it seemed to be working.

I have a feeling that the problem is somewhere in the Account Settings/Server Settings/Message Storage and the Account Settings/Local Folders/Message Storage. Both of those require that you direct TB where to go by specifying a specific folder. I must be doing something wrong because I can't get it to work. It's not clear to me why I should specify to TB where to go to find the Local Folders when that is a sub-folder in the Profile.

I felt earlier like I was making progress, but now I feel just the opposite! I'm hoping you might be able to sort this out for me.

Thanks again for your help!

Tom.

I found the abook.sqlite file both in the original place on the C: drive and in the copied files over in the D: drive. I tried to import them one at a time. Both came up empty, in spite of the fact that there is content showing in the files in Explorer.

I have not read all of this topic, but I saw at the beginning about the use of the account directory. So I think this is something that needs to be checked as unless the entire profile is in the location Thunderbird is using, you will be chasing your tail.

To clarify things and confirm if the profile where you placed things is where Thunderbird is looking;

• Open the troubleshooting information on the help menu.
• Click on the open button for the profile folder.

Is the folder that opened the one you placed all your data into?

Matt, thank you for helping out!

The answer is NO. The folder that opened, surprisingly, is the original folder on the C:, the one I was trying to move out of C: and over onto the D: drive.