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moving old TB POP a/c to new laptop, TB IMAP - where are files?

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  • Last reply by christ1

stewmartin2
stewmartin2
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I am moving from 2 yr old HP Spectre to new one, and my old TB had 3 accounts. The largest is a POP a/c, and it somehow got broken, would not work with SMTP, despite my following steps found in forums.

I want the new TB setup to be IMAP, synch more readily with my GMail account. So here's what I tried doing: 

- set up a new profile in TB with IMAP; accepted defaults
  - when it was starting to synch (back to 2015) I closed TB
- I copied the folder contents from C:\Users\stewm\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxx to a USB drive, then pasted it into the matching location of the new profile.  It doesn't seem to work; don't have folders and files in TB as expected.

Screenshot below shows the location and resulting files/folders after the "paste" into the new profile.

So can you give me more specific steps? Besides copying the folders, do I need to change any settings in .ini or other files, so the new IMAP will recognize and use the old POP files? (hope not)

Stew

I am moving from 2 yr old HP Spectre to new one, and my old TB had 3 accounts. The largest is a POP a/c, and it somehow got broken, would not work with SMTP, despite my following steps found in forums. I want the new TB setup to be IMAP, synch more readily with my GMail account. So here's what I tried doing: - set up a new profile in TB with IMAP; accepted defaults - when it was starting to synch (back to 2015) I closed TB - I copied the folder contents from C:\Users\stewm\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxx to a USB drive, then pasted it into the matching location of the new profile. It doesn't seem to work; don't have folders and files in TB as expected. Screenshot below shows the location and resulting files/folders after the "paste" into the new profile. So can you give me more specific steps? Besides copying the folders, do I need to change any settings in .ini or other files, so the new IMAP will recognize and use the old POP files? (hope not) Stew
Attached screenshots

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christ1
christ1
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Besides copying the folders, do I need to change any settings in .ini

No, you don't. Wrt the IMAP account, you may want to turn on synchronization for certain folders, so that you do have an offline copy of your messages. It would also be required to create profile backups. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/imap-synchronization

or other files,

You do have some huge files in there. Inbox 2 GB It is best practice to keep Inbox as clean and tidy as possible. A huge Inbox increases the risk for mail file corruption, and hence data loss. So make sure you always do have a recent backup of your Thunderbird profile. And I'd move messages out of Inbox.

Junk 2.2 GB Drafts 230 MB You should really clean up this mess.

the new IMAP will recognize and use the old POP files? (hope not)

I don't understand what this means.