automatic backup?

[DennisT100]

I'm looking for an addon/? that allows me to do automatic backups of the profile sans email. The installs I manage all use IMAP and backing up the copies in the profile would be redundant, consume excessive space, and take too much time. Ideally the backup would be a sync type that initiates when Thunderbird starts up. Ideas?

If that isn't available is there a list of what files are what in the profile?

[DanRaisch]

See this for details on the profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird

You might find this extension useful for backing up the profile, alhough it does include message files -- https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

[DennisT100]

Thanks. That didn't quite give me what I was looking for but pointed me to a better solution - using a different location for storing messages. So I now have a new question -

Is there a way to change the default mail storage location Thunderbird uses when adding a server? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_m ... hunderbird shows how to move to another location, but I'd like to be able to have Thunderbird to always use a predetermined location when adding servers other than the profile folder.

[JYLD]

I use Free File Sync to make a backup of my entire profile except mail at the end of each day. https://freefilesync.org/ . Not fully automated but just a couple clicks once you set it up.

I also use MozBackup addon from time to time to back up all my settings and extensions, sans emails.

The entire process could be futhrer automated with AutoIt, AutoHotkey, or Macro Express.

[tanstaafl]

Is there a way to change the default mail storage location Thunderbird uses when adding a server?

Not that I'm aware of. I searched both default and then directory in the config editor and didn't spot anything.

The default location appears to be based on appending the mail server name to the value of mail.root.imap-rel or mail.root.pop3-rel depending upon what type of account you have.

[DennisT100]

That's pretty much what I was looking for. Do you know the difference between say mail.root.imap and mail.root.imap-rel? On my test system I see mail.root.imap is the full path to ImapMail and mail.root.imap-rel is [ProfD]ImapMail

[tanstaafl]

One is the full path, the other the path relative to the start of the profile directory ([ProfD]). I assume the reason there is no entry for [ProfD] is that it is set at run time, based on the current profile selected.