Profile folder not created

[Alwi]

Hello, good morning. I had successfully transferred all my profile information to a new Thunderbird installation after formatting my hard drive. Unfortunately, a Microsoft analyst helping me remotely with another issue accidentally lost all my profile information when creating a new user in my computer and then transferring data from the old user to the newly created one. The Thunderbird application was in the new user account but the Thunderbird folder was not. I then opened Thunderbird and it created a new profile folder. We then decided to uninstall Thunderbird but the Thuderbird folder (created in the AppData/Roaming) was not deleted. We then manually deleted this folder and installed Thunderbird again. This time however Thunderbird did not create the Thunderbird folder in AppData/Roaming. I still have my Thunderbird folder that I originally used to copy my profile information to the formatted HDD but I assume I cannot just copy that to the right location because the user identification would be different (?). I am running my notebook with Windows 8.1 Pro. Any help is highly appreciated. Thank you!

[DanRaisch]

Create a new profile ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager ) but stop before adding any account information. Then copy in the data from the old profile, starting the copy at the directory immediately below profile directory. For example, if the old profile is named \xtds07rh.default, copy the contents of the directory C:\Users\USERID\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\xtds07rh.default. Paste that data into the equivalent location in the new profile. That way the file profiles.ini created as part of the new profile, will be pointing to the location into which you paste the old profile data.

[Alwi]

Dan, your instructions were perfect and they were going to work, thank you, except that I made a huge mistake and copied the wrong profile (an older backup) to the newly created profile folder. I realized this after I started Thunderbird and then I quit the program so that it would not download messages to the wrong profile. Can I just copy the right profile information to the same user folder I created or do I need to delete this profile and create a new one? Many thanks again.

[DanRaisch]

Can I just copy the right profile information to the same user folder I created or do I need to delete this profile and create a new one? Many thanks again.

Probably better to delete the unintended profile and repeat the "create\replace" scenario. This is because in addition to the default files created for the profile there will be files specific to email accounts and if the two profiles do not include accounts for the same email providers you'd wind up with stray pieces (files and directories) in the resulting "final" profile that could be confusing or troublesome or both.

[Alwi]

Dan, it worked, thank you very much for your help!

[DanRaisch]

You're quite welcome.