Importing Old Backed up Local Folders Stored on Desktop

[etjones]

In 2013 I was using Thunderbird on my laptop at work. I stored the local folders on the desktop. I made a backup copy using export and another of the folders on the desktop. I just started using Thunderbird on my desktop at my home office and I've been importing all my email from Eudora via Aid4Mail, it worked great. Now I want to pull in those 2013 work emails. However, when I try to do an import all I get is in the inbox. It's not finding the hundreds of local mail folders I had stored on my laptop desktop. I'm stuck on what next to try. I still have the laptop but long since uninstalled the 2031 Thunderbird and deleted the work email data, figuring if I ever wanted it I would have it safely stored on my desktop local drive. Before I encountered the problem trying to import the old folders I installed the latest version of Thunderbird on my laptop and the mail addresses are all imap.

Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.

[DanRaisch]

I made a backup copy using export and another of the folders on the desktop.

How did you export the data?

However, when I try to do an import all I get is in the inbox.

How did you do this import?

[etjones]

It's been a few years and I could be mistaken when I say I did export. It looks like I: 1) Copied the entire User folder/subfolders (has AppData and Roaming), which would include the profile and 2) Copied the desktop folder.

[DanRaisch]

OK, that copy was started too high in the directory tree for just a restore of a Thunderbird profile. You can, however, restore a portion of that copy, starting a C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\ because that's where the Thunderbird profile is located. You'll need to adjust the information in the file profiles.ini so it will reflect the correct values for <Windows user name> on the desktop and perhaps also the profile name. See this article -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Move_to_a_new_PC