Hello,
The following are the directions for copying your Thunderbird email profile including email folders and address book contacts to a new computer. If you are only looking to backup your email on an existing computer please see how to backup your Thunderbird email accounts. To get started with moving the email accounts, preferences, and address books to your new computer you need to locate your Thunderbird Profile.
Locate your Thunderbird profile folder on your old computer
Windows XP / Vista:
If you have another operating system try these locations for the profile folder:
Install Mozilla Thunderbird on your new computer
Copy your profile to the new computer
For additional help and tips with Mozilla Thunderbird please visit our free Mozilla Thunderbird Help forum.
The following are the directions for copying your Thunderbird email profile including email folders and address book contacts to a new computer. If you are only looking to backup your email on an existing computer please see how to backup your Thunderbird email accounts. To get started with moving the email accounts, preferences, and address books to your new computer you need to locate your Thunderbird Profile.
Locate your Thunderbird profile folder on your old computer
Windows XP / Vista:
- If it's running, close and quit Thunderbird
- Go to the Start button
- Click Run
- Type in (copy/paste to get it right): %AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\
- Click OK
- A window with a folder called xxxxxxxx.default will appear (the 8 xxxxxxxx's are random characters)
- Copy that folder to a safe place such as a USB drive or the new computer
If you have another operating system try these locations for the profile folder:
- On Windows 95/98/Me, the path is C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
- On Linux, the path is ~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/
- On Mac OS X, the path is ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
Install Mozilla Thunderbird on your new computer
- Go to Mozilla.com
- Click on Mozilla Thunderbird
- Download and run the install file
- Follow the directions for a standard install
- Do NOT start Mozilla Thunderbird when the install is done
Copy your profile to the new computer
- Follow the same directions for locating your profile folder on the old computer above
- Rename the existing profile folder and change the .default to .old
- Copy the profile folder from your old computer to the new computer
- Rename the profile folder from the old computer so that it has the same first 8 random characters as the folder created by the Thunderbird install
- You should now have 2 profile folders starting with the same 8 random characters, one ending in .default and the other in .old
- Go back a level and edit the profiles.ini file and change the profile directory name to match the folder you copied into the Profiles folder.
- Start Mozilla Thunderbird.
For additional help and tips with Mozilla Thunderbird please visit our free Mozilla Thunderbird Help forum.