Missing Thunderbird Profile

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Tony in Florida
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Missing Thunderbird Profile

Post by Tony in Florida »

When I start Thunderbird, it wants to set up a new e-mail account.

I have tried for hours on end most of the knowledge base suggestions to re-establish a lost profile or make sure the prefs file is not corrupted.

The profile where all my in-boxes and address books are located is called qhum0biy.default

The solution to this problem continues to elude me so I thought I might ask for anyone's help who has been through this issue.

Here is the contents of my Profiles.ini file after I tried unsuccessfully to set up a few new profiles to try and resolve this issue:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/27xhrb1b.default

[Profile1]
Name=Tony Grogan
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/rjq8q5qv.Tony Grogan

[Profile2]
Name=qhum0biy.default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/qhum0biy.default
Default=1

[Profile3]
Name=New profile 6-2009
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Temp\Thunderbird\Profiles\qhum0biy.default

[Profile4]
Name=Profile 1
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Temp\Thunderbird\Profiles\qhum0biy.default

[Profile5]
Name=Profile 2
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Temp\Thunderbird\Profiles

[Profile6]
Name=Profile 3
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/qem7par4.Profile 3

[Profile7]
Name=Profile 4
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/qhum0biy.default
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Daifne
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Posts: 123071
Joined: July 31st, 2005, 9:17 pm
Location: Where the Waters Meet, Wisconsin

Re: Missing Thunderbird Profile

Post by Daifne »

Try this method

To make this easier, you need to set Windows to "View hidden files and folders" and to not "Hide extensions for known file types". See this for easy instructions for how to do this: http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272 Use the instructions for XP if you're using Vista. They are the same.

Close Thunderbird and open the profile manager. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager
Create your new profile, naming it something other than "default", and setup your accounts. Make sure it's working including for sending and receiving mail.

Then I want you to install this extension: ImportExportTools: http://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

To install a Thunderbird extension do the following:
Right click the download link and choose "Save Link As...". Then open Thunderbird, in Thunderbird go to Tools->Extensions->Install (Tools>Addons>Extensions in version 2.0). Find the just downloaded .xpi file and select it. The installation will now begin. You will need to close and reopen Thunderbird to complete the install.

When it's installed, first select the folder you want to import into and then go to Tools>Import/Export in Mbox/eml format and under it, Import Mbox File. In the next screen you will get a choice to either import a selected file or to select a directory. Select the third option and when you get to the Windows file navigation window, find your OLD profile under C:\Documents and Settings\*user name*\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\*random string.profile name*\Mail and then select each account folder one at a time. This means that you will need to go through the Tools menu once for each account. The messages will be in a new folder named for the original with three numbers, ex: Inbox123, which you can then move the messages out of and sort as you want.

For your address books, install the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook extension. When it's installed you will have some new menu items under Tools in the address book manager. First open the manager with Tools>Address Book. Now go to it's Tools and find Actions for addressbook. Under it, select Import addressbook from mab file. It will ask you to create a new address book by naming it. Do so. Then, in the file navigation window that opens, find your old profile and look for the files with the .mab extension. Your personal address book is abook.mab and the collected is history.mab. You may have others that you either imported from another program or created yourself. You will need to do them one at a time. Once in, you can drag and drop the addresses from the imported books into your new Personal/Collected address book.

If you have any filters set in your accounts, the files you want to copy is msgFilterRules.dat This goes in the Mail/*account* folder. For Junk controls training, the file is training.dat and it is kept in the top level of the profile folder.

When you have completed this, compact your folders now and regularly in the future. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

That should be everything. Let me know how it turns out.
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