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

Where are my email messages stored on my PC?

  • 2 iimpendulo
  • 1 inayo le ngxaki
  • 1 view
  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu Larry Ecton

more options

I want to include all of my email messages in my daily backup to an external hard drive - along with all documents, audio and video files, etc - but I do not know where they are located on my PC.

I want to include all of my email messages in my daily backup to an external hard drive - along with all documents, audio and video files, etc - but I do not know where they are located on my PC.

Isisombulu esikhethiweyo

They are located inside your Thunderbird profile.

Profiles TB
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

Save the entire profile to ensure that all messages, account settings, personal preferences, and basically everything that personalizes Thunderbird to your liking is backed up.

It is much easier to restore the entire previous profile than to try to restore bits and pieces of message files and make them fit into a profile where some settings have changed since it was last saved.


You could use an add-on to export a copy of your emails, but I do not know if you could easily process just the newest messages since the last export session.

ImportExportTools 3.2.4.1 by Paolo "Kaosmos" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/


TB-38.3 Win10-PC

Funda le mpendulo kwimeko leyo 👍 1

All Replies (2)

more options

Isisombululo esiKhethiweyo

They are located inside your Thunderbird profile.

Profiles TB
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

Save the entire profile to ensure that all messages, account settings, personal preferences, and basically everything that personalizes Thunderbird to your liking is backed up.

It is much easier to restore the entire previous profile than to try to restore bits and pieces of message files and make them fit into a profile where some settings have changed since it was last saved.


You could use an add-on to export a copy of your emails, but I do not know if you could easily process just the newest messages since the last export session.

ImportExportTools 3.2.4.1 by Paolo "Kaosmos" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/


TB-38.3 Win10-PC

more options

thank you. my backup program finds about 61 errors when I back up the entire profile, but perhaps this is the best I can do. Still, at least now I know where they are stored on my computer, so I can copy/past periodically onto my backup external hard drive. thanks again!