Take all or nothing. It really is that simple.

There is a complex relationship between accounts the order they are created, mail and other data as well as add-ons. There is no export and import for a complete profile. So your chances for part of one are exactly Zero.

It's a shame that it's like that, transfer gigabytes of data and configuration of all accounts, or nothing.

IMHO, this should be on the feature wish list, way before Mozilla DB as it would be beneficial to all users, not just email hosting entities that exceed 100 000 accounts.

With autoconfig, we're almost there, it's just missing an option like "import from file instead of web lookup". (And an "export account settings" button).

The side effect could be very positive as any email provider could send a single file to their users for them to automatically set up their accounts. Of course it would be best if this was an agreed standard between most MUAs, not just Thunderbird.

Cheers,

Any hosting provider can publish the settings file for their server. It was part of the original DB specification however I am not aware of a single provider that has done so.

To quote https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Thunderbird/Autoconfiguration

Configuration server at ISP ISPs have the option to provide their configuration information themselves directly to users, by setting up a web server at autoconfig.<domain>, which simply returns a static XML file with the configuration, as described below. For more complicated setups, for example when the login name does not appear in the email address, the XML file can also be generated by the ISP. In such complicated cases, this is the only way to allow an automatic setup.

Configuration file on harddisk Local administrators may place a configuration file in the Thunderbird installation folder. This is mainly intended for companies who install Thunderbird on their employee's computers and want to enable easy account setup without having to set up a configuration server. This method is not practical for other use cases, because it is difficult to update the configuration file.

While this has not gone down the standards track, it is an open format that anyone can use.

Many years ago I suggested an export working configuration to enhance the ISPDB, it did not fly them and now I understand why. Just because it works does not make it either the best or the recommended settings. many servers are configured to answer on all sorts of insecure channels that will work but thir use should not be encouraged really. Like NO SSL/TLS or SMTP on port 25 (works until you change ISP's)

Matt said

Any hosting provider can publish the settings file for their server. It was part of the original DB specification however I am not aware of a single provider that has done so.

I use this, and it works well with Thunderbird (possibly also with some other clients). So that's one provider that uses this, but I really do not think I'm alone.

I've started to read about a few other ways, like with DNS and other things. It's sad that for something simple like this, there there is so much scatter, in the end, it's more broken than not. Depending on the MUA and ISP, some combinations will work, others wont, the admins get tired of trying to implement most or any of them, and users, they suffer, or they resign and get an specific app that goes with their provider and use webmails.

Meanwhile, even exporting a configuration file for a single account among a few, from one Thunderbird to another, isn't even possible (in an ideal world, we should have a standard configuration file that works with any MUA for at least the basic standard settings). When you ask users to copy their "profile" directory, you lose half of them, if you add that it's "all accounts or nothing", you lose more, and when the "profile" directory takes years to copy because it's quite heavy, you lose even more.

Email is dying and this is a piece of the reason why.