Thunderbird Lost my profile

[Tampatexan]

I opened Thunderbird and it came up empty with the "new email" box. When I did a search on why this happened, I found that it couldn't find my profile. I researched about profiles and found my old profile. I followed the instructions on here about telling Thunderbird to find the new profile and when I opened Thunderbird, all of the subfolders I had were there, but they were all empty! Also, my address book was empty. Clicking on "properties" of the profile shows this: 6,762 Files, 400 Folders ... so, it appears that all of my saved emails, etc are there. Why don't they show up in Thunderbird? HELP!!!

[tanstaafl]

What do you mean by "it came up empty with the "new email" box."? Please elaborate. Did you have anything listed in the inbox folder listing when that happened? Was the only initial problem that it didn't know there was any new mail?

If it can't find a profile it normally runs the new account wizard and create a new (but incomplete, with no accounts or contacts) profile. Did it do that?

One way or another you should be able to recover everything. Its just not clear yet whether your prefs.js file or the profiles.ini file is to blame. If http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_ ... isappeared doesn't help try using a command line argument per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Running_from_ ... hunderbird to specify what profile to use. That will bypass profiles.ini and let you verify that your profile is good.

[tanstaafl]

Another solution IF you verified that your profile works okay when you launch Thunderbrid with command line arguments to specify its location is the "nothing you do works" section at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... u_do_works .

[Tampatexan]

To answer your questions:

1) Program opened empty - all of my subfolders were gone, as was my calendar. It appeared to be a brand new file. All saved mail was gone, etc.

2) Yes, that was what it ran. I have done what you suggested, and when I select "Properties" on the profile it is using, the profile shows it has 6,762 files and 400 folders, but when TB opens, it only shows an inbox and trash folder. I went ahead and set up the "new" account, and am receiving mail, I would just like to get all of my other mail back (if possible)...

[kerft]

This isn't really a question. I am just pointing out you said you made a "new account" and you did not say you made a "new profile" That could help someone trying to help.

[Tampatexan]

This isn't really a question. I am just pointing out you said you made a "new account" and you did not say you made a "new profile" That could help someone trying to help.

Right -- I filled out the form so that TB would go ahead and open. Then I closed it and replaced the "new" profile with my old one. But, alas, when I started TB, the old data still doesn't appear ...

[tanstaafl]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_addres ... n_profiles if you want to keep your existing new profile, and just import mail fodlers and address books from the original.

If you want to try to reuse your old profile I suggest you start by verifying its still good, using the command line arguments to specify it (rather than profiles.ini).

[Tampatexan]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_addres ... n_profiles if you want to keep your existing new profile, and just import mail folders and address books from the original.

If you want to try to reuse your old profile I suggest you start by verifying its still good, using the command line arguments to specify it (rather than profiles.ini).

When I use the command line arguments, Thunderbird opens with the box to create a new file, so I guess the profile I have isn't any good, in spite of showing it's full of files and folders..

[tanstaafl]

Use notepad to look at the contents of the prefs.js file and see if it has any accounts. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_ ... y_prefs.js has information on how to interpret what you see in that file.

"Open the prefs.js file with a text editor such as Notepad (don't double click on it using Windows Explorer) and search for the string mail.account . It's used in statements such as user_pref("mail.account.account1.server", "server1") to define an account, and it's used in statements such as user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1, account2, account3") to list what accounts exists. If you can't find any, then your prefs.js file is either empty or corrupt."

[Tampatexan]

Good News (Partially)!! I found an incremental backup and was able to recover the original profile (and my address book). However, all of my mail folders aren't there. I looked at the other incremental backup files, and the profile appears in some of them as well. Can I combine the contents of the profile from the backups into one profile (which would then - hopefully - have all of my folders/saved mail/etc) ??

[tanstaafl]

Yes. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders for how to import mail folders.