Thunderbird Help

[Yv]

To go with mini's firefox thread, a matching thunderbird thread. Last year, in a fit of pique at microsoft, I stopped using Outlook and switched to Thunderbird. All fine and dandy, but, my laptop is getting decidely tired and will have to replaced probably sooner rather then later. When I used outlook, I used to archive all my emails in one hit rather than trying to save them individually, so even now, I can open the program, select an archive file and reread old important emails. Now the problem I have is that I can't seem to find a similar facility within thunderbird, and I have a lot of emails I want to transfer over to a new machine [or at least back up now just in case this one decides it wants early retirement] Do I really have to save each one individually, or am I missing something?

 

[oldgit]

Just copy the whole lot of your thunderbird email data onto a USB drive/flash card then copy it into the
NEW thunderbird area on the destination laptop

Your actual profile data is kept in:
Application Data/thunderbird/default/RAND/

RAND is a directory with a random name. It will be different each time you install thunderbird. It will look something like: /ii1z1j5y.slt/
The use of a randomly named directory is what usually causes a problem.

Here is how:

1) If you haven't already, run thunderbird so it will create a new default profile.
2) From your backup, copy the contents of thunderbird/default/RAND/ into the new Application Data/thunderbird/default/RAND/. Overwrite any files if it prompts you.
3) Fire up thunderbird.

Done

 

[Yv]

You are a star Paul, thankyou!! Will do a back up now, and save your post so I can do one again, depending on how long it is before Mr LL allows new 'puter. Many thanks

 

[theMusicMan]

If you're still miffed with BG and MS, have a think about the Mac...

 

[Yv]

If you're still miffed with BG and MS, have a think about the Mac...

I would, but to be honest, I couldnt justify the extra expense [well ok, HE couldnt] thought i do intend getting one eventually. Going to replace this lappy with a big fat desktop pc and decent monitor, but may well make the next notebook a Mac.

 

[Hacker]

If you PM your email address I can send you an add-on called MozBackup which archives all your emails and allow you to transfer them to a new machine.