Moving Thunderbird Mail from Win 7 to Win 8

[cameo]

The Win 7 version is on a laptop hard disk (after removing it from a
fried machine) and I'd like move the Local Folder content of the Mail to
the new Laptop's Thunderbird installation. I thought I could just copy
that stuff across the two hard disks (from Profiles to Profiles), but
apparently that doesn't work because the target TB does not see the
copied content in the Local Folder.

The TB's Import function on the other hand does not have an option to
import from another TB mail, only Eudora and Outlook/Express. Anybody
handled a situation like this before successfully?

 

[Andy Burns]

I'd like move the Local Folder content of the Mail to
the new Laptop's Thunderbird installation. I thought I could just copy
that stuff across the two hard disks (from Profiles to Profiles)

You can, but you have to take the whole tree under

C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\

the profiles.ini file is required as it points to a random named folder
under profiles, you can fix that up by hand if necessary, if you've not
copied the whole tree.

 

[John Williamson]

You can, but you have to take the whole tree under

C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\

the profiles.ini file is required as it points to a random named folder
under profiles, you can fix that up by hand if necessary, if you've not
copied the whole tree.

Or use MozBackup:-

http://www.mozbackup.org/

It'll let you keep all your passwords and preferences for Firefox, too.

What's not quite so easy is moving from Windows to Linux...

 

[Andy Burns]

Or use MozBackup:-

Generally yes, but when the original machine is fried, not so easy ...

 

[Paul]

The Win 7 version is on a laptop hard disk (after removing it from a
fried machine) and I'd like move the Local Folder content of the Mail to
the new Laptop's Thunderbird installation. I thought I could just copy
that stuff across the two hard disks (from Profiles to Profiles), but
apparently that doesn't work because the target TB does not see the
copied content in the Local Folder.

The TB's Import function on the other hand does not have an option to
import from another TB mail, only Eudora and Outlook/Express. Anybody
handled a situation like this before successfully?

How about... copy the profile across, then use the Profile Manager ?
The Profile Manager makes edits to the profile.ini . Change the Default Profile,
to point to the new profile.

http://www-archive.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile

thunderbird.exe -ProfileManager

There's nothing particularly magical about the folder name.

%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\

You could have, for example...

%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\12345678.default\
%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\2468ACDE.default\

The .default on the end doesn't mean anything, and is
simply a hint for humans. You could rename the folders
like this (as long as the profile.ini is edited to match
the new names).

%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\12345678\
%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\2468ACDE\

In the Profile Manager, you add a new entry, so that one
entry points to 12345678 and the other entry points to
2468ACDE. And then, you assign the default status to one
of them, such that if Thunderbird is started without
the -ProfileManager argument, it starts up using the
newly selected default profile.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Roy Smith]

Or use MozBackup:-

http://www.mozbackup.org/

It'll let you keep all your passwords and preferences for Firefox, too.

What's not quite so easy is moving from Windows to Linux...

It's not any harder than with windows. The only difference is that
in Linux the profile folder is a hidden folder in the user's home
folder.Typically the path is:

/home/(username)/.Thunderbird

In all flavors of Thunderbird you don't have to use the default
path and use your own if desired. I once had a PC set up to dual
boot windows and Linux and shared a Thunderbird profile between
them on a shared partition. Mozilla doesn't recommend it, but it
can be done.

 

[cameo]

You can, but you have to take the whole tree under

C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\

the profiles.ini file is required as it points to a random named folder
under profiles, you can fix that up by hand if necessary, if you've not
copied the whole tree.

Thanks, Andy, this actually worked great. After renaming the existing
Thunderbird folder to TB-8, I copied over the TB directory tree from my
old laptop's drive, and everything looked the way I saw it last time on
the old laptop when I started it up, plus the new downloads since then.
Great help!

Do you have a similar tip to move over Chrome bookmarks, too?

 

[Paul]

Thanks, Andy, this actually worked great. After renaming the existing
Thunderbird folder to TB-8, I copied over the TB directory tree from my
old laptop's drive, and everything looked the way I saw it last time on
the old laptop when I started it up, plus the new downloads since then.
Great help!

Do you have a similar tip to move over Chrome bookmarks, too?

There's some details on moving a Chrome profile here.

http://www.labnol.org/software/create-family-profiles-in-google-chrome/4394/

chrome.exe --user-data-dir="some_path" -first-run

HTH,
Paul

 

[Andy Burns]

Thanks, Andy, this actually worked great.

Glad to have helped.

Do you have a similar tip to move over Chrome bookmarks, too?

Sorry, I hardly ever use chrome ...

 

[cameo]

Glad to have helped.


Sorry, I hardly ever use chrome ...

It's OK. It worked similarly as in the case of Thunderbird, but instead
of moving over an entire directory structure, I only needed to move ove
the Bookmarks file. That did it.