Can a Tbird profile be copied and pasted??

[sillycat41]

I used the old Mozbackup program to save T-bird profiles before I reinstalled Windows. When I tried to restore the profiles Mozbackup didn't work. It's saved as a PCV file... can I just paste the profiles manually? Not exactly sure where to paste them... for example:
C:\Users\myname\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles Does this Profile Folder have the PCV extension?? Any ideas? Thanks!

P.S. Isn't there a way to copy the profile manually and then paste it into the same location on a new computer?

[DanRaisch]

A) PCV files are just ZIP files with a different file name extension. You can rename the file and unpack it using any UnZip utlity.

B) MozBackup has not been maintained or updated in years and it should no longer be used.

C) See this article -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup (Ignore any references in that article to MozBackup.)

[tanstaafl]

A *.pcv file is just a renamed .zip file so you can rename it and unzip it.

You can copy its contents (don't copy the profile directory itself, just its contents) over an existing profile. You can go to help -> more troubleshooting information, click on about:profiles and then use the create profile button to create a new profile.

If you just installed Thunderbird on a new PC it will automatically launch the new account wizard the first time you run it. You can abort that, go to help -> more troubleshooting information, and click on Open Profile (local drive) to open windows explorer at your current profile. That's a legal profile, even though it has no useful information because you didn't add any accounts. So its a safe place to copy your old profile.

If you're using Thunderbird 102 it has a tools -> import that knows how to "import from another Thunderbird installation".

Don't use Mozbackup anymore. Its been abandoned, buggy and I don't think it knows how to handle the changes in profiles.ini made for version 78 and later.