I suggest you uninstall 68 and download and run the installer for 60.9:

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/60.9.0/win32/

Wait for the automatic update to 68.2 (or 68.3 or...) when it's released. Check that you don't have a software updater moving you to 68.

Will I get my stuff back or will I be starting all over - again?

Uninstalling or reinstalling the program doesn't affect your data that is stored in the separate profile folder. When you install 60.9, it should read your existing profile.

If install does not affect data, then where is my original ( before update to 68)? The update removed all of my data, which I now don't have, If I uninstall and reinstall 60.9, will I get my original data back or just what I have now?

The update to 68 didn't remove your old data, it just created a new profile folder with the suffix default-release.

If you open this location in Explorer:

C:\Users\<winusername>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

(allow viewing of hidden files and folders)

do you see 2 folders, <8charstring>.default and <differentstring>.default-release?

If you reinstall 60.9, it will read your original profile .default.

Yes I have 2 profiles as you mention. However, they were both empty after the update, no address book, no email. That is my problem. Where did my original profile go to?

If you applied the standard TB uninstaller from Windows Control Panel, not a 3rd-party uninstaller, the only way that your data would be deleted is if you accidentally checked the box in the uninstall dialog to delete the personal TB data. Make sure you are looking in the ...AppData\Roaming folder, not the ...AppData\Local folder.

I have not uninstalled anything yet. All I did was update to 68.0 and lost everything. I've tied searching for "profiles" and can't find the "before update" version. That's what I want to find. Where did it go?

How did you update to 68? Since auto-update from 60.9 has not yet been activated, the only way is to download the 68 installer from the TB site, or if a 3rd-party software updater interferes. The old profile would have been the oldest of the 2 folders in ...\Profiles, <8charstring>.default. Why that folder is empty, as well as the new one, is not something I can explain.

Thanks for your help. I received a notice of the update, so I downloaded it and proceeded to install. When it finished and I started TB. it prompted to set up an account. Since then I have no historical stuff (add book and important saved emails. From all that I have read, a few lines of code to backup profiles before installing would be a good idea to implement. Thanks again.

> I received a notice of the update, so I downloaded it and proceeded to install.

Ray, Where and when exactly did you receive this notice?

I'm not quite sure but I believe it was when I checked my email on sept 6th or 9th. It appeared to come from TB. I remember something about "just released" in the email.