Transfer Thunderbird profile WITHOUT emails

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all_accounts
Posts: 2
Joined: September 30th, 2016, 6:33 am

Transfer Thunderbird profile WITHOUT emails

Post by all_accounts »

Hello,

I want to transfer the thunderbird settings without the emails. I have several email settings which takes a lot of time to input every time I go on a new computer and I don't want to carry a 2-3GB profile folder with myself on a flash drive or waste 2-3 GB of my cloud drives on it. Is there anyway to have only the "settings" and import them and let the thunderbird download the emails for all the accounts?

Thank you in advance for you help,
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LIMPET235
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Posts: 39932
Joined: October 19th, 2007, 1:53 am
Location: The South Coast of N.S.W. Oz.

Re: Transfer Thunderbird profile WITHOUT emails

Post by LIMPET235 »

Moving to Thunderbird Support...
[Ancient Amateur Astronomer.]
Win-10-H/64 bit/500G SSD/16 Gig Ram/450Watt PSU/350WattUPS/Firefox-115.0.2/T-bird-115.3.2./SnagIt-v10.0.1/MWP-7.12.125.

(Always choose the "Custom" Install.)
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tanstaafl
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Posts: 49647
Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Transfer Thunderbird profile WITHOUT emails

Post by tanstaafl »

Sure, just copy the prefs.js file (it has all of your settings, including your account settings) from the old profile over the corresponding file in a new profile. You could do the same for the *.mab files (address books). "Help -> troubleshooting information -> show folder" will open windows at your current profile.

Have you considered using IMAP accounts rather than POP accounts (assuming your email provider supports them)? If you disable global searching/indexing and offline folders (synchronization & storage -> keep messages for this account on this computer) it will only download headers (needed for the folder listing) to the hard disk. When you open a message it will fetch the contents into memory, but not store it on your hard disk. That would dramatically reduce the size of your profile. You could use either the quick filter bar or classic search to search the current folder.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
all_accounts
Posts: 2
Joined: September 30th, 2016, 6:33 am

Re: Transfer Thunderbird profile WITHOUT emails

Post by all_accounts »

tanstaafl wrote:Sure, just copy the prefs.js file (it has all of your settings, including your account settings) from the old profile over the corresponding file in a new profile. You could do the same for the *.mab files (address books). "Help -> troubleshooting information -> show folder" will open windows at your current profile.

Have you considered using IMAP accounts rather than POP accounts (assuming your email provider supports them)? If you disable global searching/indexing and offline folders (synchronization & storage -> keep messages for this account on this computer) it will only download headers (needed for the folder listing) to the hard disk. When you open a message it will fetch the contents into memory, but not store it on your hard disk. That would dramatically reduce the size of your profile. You could use either the quick filter bar or classic search to search the current folder.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird

I will try them asap.
Thank you so much. Quite a moderator you are !
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