Restoring Profile Fails

[Briansdad]

Restore of backup Profile (from dead computer) to new install refuses to work. Followed directions form https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pr ... ile-backup
section "Restoring to a different location"
At wits end. Please help!

Bill

BTW: in addition My backup had 3 profiles and 2 were .Default. How can I tell which one is the most recent, the latest before my computer died? The Backup was in a zip file and the dates were changed to the date it was zipped.

[tanstaafl]

Use the profile manager to create a new profile. Don't bother filling out the information the new account wizard wants, immediately exit it and use help -> troubleshooting information -> show folder to open windows explorer at that profiles location. Exit Thunderbird and copy the contents of your (unzipped) backup profile over the contents of the new profile (which is just a stub, but Thunderbird knows how to find and use it). Run Thunderbird again, using the restored profile.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird (has other solutions)

If you can't tell which backup is the latest from the .zip files timestamp unzip it and look at the timestamp for either a "inbox." file (the mbox file used to store the messages for a inbox folder) or prefs.js (settings).

[Briansdad]

Yes, thank you. The directions from the link I gave are incomplete. After creating a new profile with -p, I would open thunderbird and then just close, x out, the dialog boxes and program rather finishing the initial set up. I am recovering from a HDD failure and all my software keys are in one of my email folders. So happy to have them back! Thanks you@
Bill

If this forum had a dancing emoticon, you see several here!