Archiving Thunderbird addressbooks and settings

[Camelbreath]

I guess I need to be retrained after coffee breaks because I have asked this question before. I am going to wipe the C drive and reinstall Windows 10 and need to archive Thunderbird address books and settings for the new installation. How do I go about doing that?

Thanks to those who know more than me,
Joe

[tanstaafl]

You could just copy the *.mab (the address books) and prefs.js (the settings) files from your profile to a safe location such as a flash drive. Afterwards you can copy them over the corresponding files in your new profile. But why not save the entire profile, and reuse it?

help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder opens windows explorer at your profile. You can copy&paste the contents somewhere safe. When you re-install Thunderbird it won't find a profile so it will automatically run the new account wizard. Abort out of it, and use help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder to open windows explorer at the legitimate but useless profile it automatically created. Exit Thunderbird and copy the contents of your old profile over it.

If your old profile was at ...\xyz and you created a xyz subdirectory in the new profile when you copied it you did it wrong. Delete the contents of the new profile and try again.