UPGRADING TO TB 78 (Linux)

[wildalaska]

I recently upgraded from Mint 19.3 to Cinnamon Mint 20.1, which uses T-B 78. Unfortunately. Because the T-B in Mint 19.3 worked just fine; I think it was 68. Below is a discussion of the hassles and what I did to fix them.

1. Importing my 19.3 T-bird emails and contacts was a giant hassle. T-B 78.7.1, oddly, is unable to import from the T-B version used in 19.3. Rather user hostile, if you ask me. So I had to decipher the 78.7.1 profile structure and do it manually. Started by browsing to the 19.3 profile, which I copied from an archive. Biggest hassles were that 78.7.1 mindlessly insisted on reading all my emails from 2009. All 26000 of them. No option to skip this. OK, so I let it, took 5 hours. Then I closed T-B, renamed the mostly useless new inbox and its associated .msf file, then copied the correct inbox/msf from my archive to the mail folder. Then opened T-B and only moved the few recent emails to the old inbox. When I did that, T-B did something very dangerous: It wanted to delete the entire inbox - which would be OK once I determine it's safe; it did this again when transferring several messages between two other important folders. This is a dangerous feature that should be deleted ASAP before someone ruins their email.
2. Lastly, the 78.7.1 T-B was (oddly) unable to recognize or import my old, and large, 19.3 address book. I fixed this by copying my abook.mab to the first level in the profile folder that has the inbox. Good thing I'm an old dog with computers. I pity those with less experience.
3. When configuring T-B 78, I accidentality told it IMAP for the mail server. Then it would NOT let me change this to POP. I had to delete the account and start over. What a waste of time.

Finally, all seems well but why did T-B make so many (and unnecessary, it seems to me) changes and fail to see the need to import from older T-B versions? AND I hate the new email compose form, esp. the way it displays addresses. Hard to read. It would be nice if Mint 20.1 had an option to use earlier T-B versions.

T-B developers may need to consider the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[WaltS48]

Because things were broken and fixed, new features added, and yes changes made.

Thunderbird 78 FAQ

Release Notes