Lost Thunderbird Profile
Last month my hard drive crashed. Had power, but couldn't reboot. I got a new PC and reinstalled all apps including Thunderbird. I had hundreds of e-mails that I had saved in various subfiles that are important to me. Now I cannot find them because the old profile is lost. I had backed up everything on iDrive, but I guess when I reinstalled Thunderbird, it created a new profile. I have followed all the suggestions to try to find the old profile, but with no success. I'm not a techy and am nearly 80 years old. Any ideas?
所有回覆 (3)
Thunderbird = TB.
access your iDrive backup/copy, or access recovered hard-drive: • you MUST first make backup/copy of ALL sub-folders & files under this location, copy into another external drive: "%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\" that is usually located here: "C:\Users\<YourWindowsUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\"
that "Profiles" folder ( ...\Thunderbird\Profiles\ ) contains multiple sub-folders , those sub-folders are various TB profile folders , a TB profile folder looks like this : "xxxxxxxx.profile-name" ( where x in xxxxxxxx is random alphanumeric characters/letters/numbers, etc ) ( the "xxxxxxxx" is profile-folder-ID part , and "profile-name" is profile's name part )
you can use the TB-profile again, with a new TB , but please first use exact same version of earlier TB, first . Later you can update/upgrade to what you want.
your mail-accounts in TB, which were IMAP type/based , those emails are actually still in REMOTE MAIL SERVER . you did not lost those emails . TB just downloads a copy & then shows to you. once/when you (will) add those mail-accounts back (as IMAP based access) in TB, all earlier emails will re-appear.
but, your mail-accounts in TB, which were POP type/based , those emails are DOWNLODED into your computer inside TB-profile folder by TB (according to POP specification). So those are not accessible anymore or lost , unless you have a backup/copy somewhere , or, if you have selected such options in TB : Do NOT delete/remove emails from remote mail-server after download a local copy , or , Keep a copy in remote mail-server.
using online backup is not pro Privacy-Rights friendly , allows to increase abuse of human-rights , unless its locked (aka: encrypted) with such crypto mechanism, that ONLY you have/own the key , no one else have the (decryption/encryption) key . only that type of remote crypto/encrypted storage solution is better than remote plain storage , and still not one of the best.
you should have used an external drive (locally) to make/keep/store your backup/copy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backup_software
use data recovery software on you crashed hard-drive, to recover data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery#List_of_data_recovery_software
but what is right or correct for you , that depends on your choice/preference/convenience/expertise,etc,etc many factors.
由 atErik 於 修改
2nd post.
由 atErik 於 修改
hi THUNDERBIRD MOD/ADMIN , please add my earlier answer back here . this post can be erased . thanks. -atErik