Can't find profile since "upgrade" to 78.2.1

[RogerE]

We have used TB for many years with the following setup:

We have 2 PCs (one is Win 10 the other Win7) which needd to access the emails, so we have the profile on a NAS so it can be reached by both. Each PC (although 64 bit) use the 32 bit version installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird.

This weekend one of the PCs upgraded (?) the version 78.2.1 and since then we have "lost" the shared profile.

The PC that upgraded now wants me to setup as if an original install, and on the PC that didn't upgrade I get a popup message "You have launched an older version of Thunderbird", and the message says a newer version has made changes to profile...

From the reading of the article that launches I wonder if our setup is no longer compatible with \thunderbird, or if it is how do we rescue our old data?

Many thanks

[tanstaafl]

What version did it upgrade from?

Try clicking on about:profiles in help -> troubleshooting information and see if it lists the missing profile. If so, press the associated "set as default profile" button and restart Thunderbird.

Are you sharing just the profile or are you also sharing the profiles.ini file?

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/de ... stallation (which was written for version 68). The same issue occurs with version 78.* unless you did a automated upgrade of version 68.*. We're stuck with a feature the Firefox developers added that doesn't help most Thunderbird users (who only run one version of Thunderbird on a specific machine). The lock statement in profiles.ini uses a hash of the Thunderbird installation directory to lock a profile to a version (it actually locks it to an installation). If you use a a copy of Thunderbird installed in a different directory (even if its the same version) that triggers the error message you saw. It has nothing to do with the contents of the profile, its all done via profiles.ini. This "feature" was added in version 68.

If none of this helps try modifying the thunderbird shortcut to add -p "complete_path_to_profile" command line arguments.

[RogerE]

Thanks for reply.

Not certain which version it upgraded from, but on the main-use laptop I usually update whenever I get a message about updating to new version.

The about:profiles shows the existing profile on the shared drive. It is only the profile that is shared, each PC has it's own profiles.ini inthe APPDATA folder.

On the main (win 10) PC tried using -p "path" shortcut and it brought up the profile manager. Selected the only profile "default" (right click showed it as the shared one) and Thunderbird then started with the new "hub" and a popup aking me to "Set Up Your Existing Email Address".

Now confused. Does the new Hub use the existing profile, or will it setup a completely new one - which is something I don't want.

Also, reading that article, does it now mean sharing a profile is now impossible?

[RogerE]

Now getting desperate!

Have copied copy of the profile from NAS drive to c:/thunderbird/cc5rdcry.default (same name as was on NAS drive)

Removed TBird 78.2.1. Restarted Laptop. Downloaded TBird installer and reinstalled. Started TBird (now 78.2.2) and it went to the new Hub, asking for new email address and password. Closed TBird without entering anything. Backed up the profiles and installs.ini files. Modified the profiles.ini and installs.ini to point to the c:/thunderbird/cc5rdcry.default profile. Started TBird and it again showed the new Hub and again asked for email/password details.

Panicked!

Closed TBird and then reinstated the saved INI files and coped the contents of c:/thunderbird/cc5rdcry.default to the default folder as deternined by the installs/profiles.ini. Restarted TBird, but same thing happened (Hub, asking for email account details)

HELP - can't afford to lose the existing emails as thay are for a small charity.

[tanstaafl]

Get rid of the profiles.ini file on the PC. Start Thunderbird and abort the new account wizard that it will automatically run, but don't exit the program.

When it can't find a profiles.ini file it will create one, plus a placeholder profile. Use help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder to open windows explorer at the current profile. Copy the contents of the profile you want to use there. Don't copy the actual directory, just its contents. i.e. old prefs.js replaces new prefs.js etc. If you had copied the contents of the old profile from a ..\Profiles\xyz directory and you see a xyz directory in the new profile you made a mistake.

Start Thunderbird again. It should automatically use that profile. It doesn't know/care that the contents were changed.

I'm currently using a profile at C:\Users\Eric\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\feu8hx1l.default-release . Its specified by

[Install2FAC8E3352CFC19B]
Default=Profiles/feu8hx1l.default-release
Locked=1

in the profiles.ini. I suspect I could tell it to use a profile on a NAS drive by copying the profile there and updating Default=Profiles/feu8hx1l.default-release to use the new location. However, if I edit/replace [Install2FAC8E3352CFC19B] it will complain that I'm using the wrong version of Thunderbird because that is a hash of the location of the installation directory.

You used to be able to choose whether to use relative or absolute paths using IsRelative=1 . I suspect you can't add that for a profile created for version 68 or later. So the relative path you will have to specify to the directory on the NAS drive will look really ugly.

You'll probably need to add multiple ..\ to get it to the root of the boot drive and then concatenate the path to the directory on the NAS drive. For example if I open a windows console (using cmd.exe) at C:\Users\Eric\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird I can do a directory listing of drive d: using dir ..\..\..\..\..\..\d:

If you are used to creating symlinks for Windows it would be easier to create one to specify the directory instead. That way it looks like just another child directory in the Profiles directory (rather than a directory on a NAS drive). See https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/c ... -or-linux/ if you don't know what I'm talking about.

[RogerE]

Many thanks, tried it a couple of times

First by copying files and folders from original profile, as you suggested. Restarted TBird, still got the Hub+setup new account dialog.

Secondly closed TBird, deleted all contents of that profile, and then copying all contents of original profile to the empty, new, profile.

Restarted TBird and still getting the Hub and new account dialog.

Strange thing is that if I click on Address Book (above the Welcome to Mozilla Thunderbird 78.2.2) it shows most, if not all, of my contacts - as if it was trying to use the original profile.

[tanstaafl]

Did you delete the existing profiles.ini before you tried that? You need to start fresh. It sounds like Thunderbird is looking in the right place for the profiles files but doesn't consider it a valid profile.

As a sanity check when it runs the new account wizard try adding a single IMAP account (to avoid the risk of losing downloaded messages when you delete the contents of that profile afterwards) and see if it remembers that account when you restart Thunderbird. You could do that with a POP account but would need to be much more careful (make certain that "leave messages on server" in server settings is checked and that you don't delete any of those downloaded messages from within Thunderbird)

As a temporary workaround try adding a -P --allow-downgrade command line argument to the Thunderbird shortcut's properties. That's normally used to launch the profile manager (-P) so that you can explicitly select a existing profile, and try to use a profile associated with a different (usually older) installation (--allow-downgrade).

[RogerE]

Thanks for your help, but it looks like the problem is a corrupted prefs.js file

All the items relating to address book (ldap_2.servers.exportedaddresses)and mail accounts (mail.account and mail.identity) are missing.

Looks like it happened first time TBird was started after the 78.2.1 upgrade (looking at the time stamp of the prefs.js file on the old profile).

Unfortunately an automatic backup happened after the update, overwriting the one from the night before, so looks like I'll have to manually rebuild the system and hope I can recover everything.

[tanstaafl]

One alternative approach would be to install version 52.* and use several add-ons to import address books as is (MoreFunctionsForAddressbooks) and import mbox files (ImportExportTools), get the profile working, and then upgrade. There were also some add-ons that can crawl your mail folders to build new address books based on contacts they found (EmailPicky 4). Which method is easiest is really a question of what data survived.

Thunderbird 78.* deletes contacts in the *.mab files when it migrates them to a shared sqlite database. If the address book has most of your contacts try exporting it as a .csv or .ldif file. You can import that in any version to create a new address book.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an ... hunderbird and https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html if you want a setup program for an older version of Thunderbird.

[RogerE]

Thanks for your help. Sorry to be a PITA.

Apparently ImpoertExportTools doesn't work with TB78, so have installed TB52 and ImportExportTools.

When I go to Tools/ImportExport none of the import options are enabled. Is this usual?

I tried Import Profile, but, no matter which profile I try (the original one on the NAS, the local copy of it or the one from the TB78 install) it tells me folder doesn't contain a valid profile.

Do I need to setup the various email accounts first?

[tanstaafl]

You're not a PITA

I've never heard of the options to import mbox files in ImportExportTools being disabled. However if you're currently in a IMAP account you get a error message about it being impossible to import in this folder. If you open a folder in "Local Folders" or a POP account and try again it will work.

Thunderbird 68 and 78 register a profile in profiles.ini using a new format that I suspect ImportExportTools doesn't support. It has a Lock statement that has a hash of the location of the installation directory.

One possible workaround would be to create a new profile in version 52.* and then copy the contents of your profile over its files. help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder will open windows explorer at the current profiles location. The only issue would be the *.mab files (address books) will be empty but if you exported your address books as .csv or .ldif files from version 78 you can import them using tools -> import

Another possibility would be to manually add a entry in profiles.ini to register the version 78 profile using the old format.

I suggest you think about moving the profiles.ini file somewhere safe (in case you want to reuse it later on). That will make it appear as if you don't have one. Start TB52 and it will automatically run the new account wizard, create a new profiles.ini and add a entry for a profile to it. That profile will have nothing very useful in it, but its legitimate. Exit the new account wizard (no sense filling in any information using it since you're going to replace the prefs.js file with one from your version 78 profile) and use help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder to open windows explorer at that location, exit Thunderbird, and copy the contents of your version 78 profile over it. If your version 78 profile was in a ..\xyz directory and the version 52 profile contains a xyz child directory you made a mistake.

edit: I just re-read where you said your version 78 profile had a corrupt prefs.js file. In that case don't copy that file when you copy the contents of the profile, and use tools -> account settings to add the accounts. You can use the browse button by the local directory setting at the bottom of the server settings for an account to change what directory it uses for it files.

[RogerE]

Once again many thanks.

I have been able to copy the 4 pop3 accounts over from the old profile to the new by identifying which pop3 folder applied to which account in the old profile, creating a new pop3 folder in the new profile then coying old folder details to new. That has worked a treat. All folder, filters and messages recovered.

Now I am struggling with the IMAP messages - there are 2 IMAP accounts, admin@xxxxx.org.uk and info@xxxxx.org.uk.

On the old profile there is a single folder mail.xxxxx.org.uk and a MSF file of the same name. unfortunately iI can't determine what goes where as the prefs.ini has no details about the accounts, and I can't work it out.

So I have created the same 2 accounts on the new profile and I can see, from the prefs.ini, that 1 points to "ImapMail/mail.xxxxx.org.uk" and the other "ImapMail/mail.xxxxx.org-3.uk". (the program also seems to have created "ImapMail/mail.xxxxx.org-1.uk", "ImapMail/mail.xxxxx.org-1.uk.sbd","ImapMail/mail.xxxxx.org-2.uk" and "ImapMail/mail.xxxxx.org-2.uk.sbd" folders. The non.sbd folders contain empty msgFilterRules.dat files, and the others contain INBOX files with no messages).

However the bad news is that I have checked the email servers on the hosting company, and all the messages prior to the time of the upgrade to 78.2.1 have gone, so assume when whatever happened to cause the prefs.ini to corrupt also sent back a "delete messages" to the server. I have logged an issue with the hosting company, and hope they can restore from a backup!

Cheers

[tanstaafl]

Look in the old copy of your shared profile and see if you have mbox files for the IMAP accounts. They should be in the ImapMail directory, in child directories named after the IMAP server used by each account. These mbox files are created by default as offline folders that are kept in sync with your remote folders unless you explicitly disabled that feature in synchronization & storage. Thunderbird displays the contents of the remote folders when working online, and the contents of the offline folders when working offline.

If they're more than a few KB in size they probably have a copy of the messages. Create a folder in "Local Folders" with a unique name and copy the mbox files there. Then use Thunderbird to see if you can see the messages in the mail folders. If they're there then you can copy them to your IMAP account (using the Thunderbird user interface), though you might want to wait until you see if your hosting company can restore the missing mail first.

Moving the mbox files to the local directory for the IMAP account is counter-productive since when Thunderbird syncs the remote folders with the offline folders it will delete them or their contents since they don't exist on the IMAP server. The sync goes in one direction only.

[RogerE]

Everything now ok (well all but a couple of days of emails)

I created POP3 accounts of he IMAP ones, copied the emails that ha, but wd accumulated since the update to the POP3 accounts and then deleted the IMAP accounts. The ISP then reinstated a backup for a couple of days before it all went wrong, and now everything seems to be working ok

In the meantime Thunderbird updated to 78.2.2 and all seems well.

Alls well that ends well.

Cheers, and, again, thanks.

[wsmwk]

So your profiles were originally on NAS?