When migrating or copying an existing profile, it doesn't work in Thunderbird from any location except the original one.
At some point in 2017 I created a profile on a drive I'll call E. That's the one that Thunderbird opens, checked in the Profile Manager. When I tried to copy that profile to a new laptop today, it comes up with only 2 of the three accounts I have set up, and all mail and subfolders are missing.
I also tried creating a new profile in my desktop C drive in the default Thunderbird profiles folder, deleting its contents, and copying the contents of the working (E) profile there. Again, it opens with only 2 of 3 accounts and all mail and subfolders missing. I did notice that the path for Local Folders was wrong, it repeated the C:/users/myname/appdata/roaming/ part of the path twice. When I fixed that, Local Folders showed up, but again it was empty.
I'm not sure why this profile is not working when I move it anywhere else. I've moved Thunderbird profiles in the past with no problems. Could this one somehow be corrupt? If it is, is there some way to safely clean/copy it to a new profile?
I'm on Windows 10, Thunderbird version 60.8.0.
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did you originally move your entire profile or just restate the local directory in account settings. This is not moving a profile, is easily done and makes moving to a new device a nightmare.
So on your old computer Open the profiles.ini file for Thunderbird. Windows key + R Type %appdata%\Thunderbird\profiles.ini and press enter. Select for the file to be opened in notepad. Copy and paste the contents to a reply here on the forum. ( I assume profile "names" are going to be hardly private. Usually they are just called default anyway as most folk do not even know there is a profile manager.
The following is an excerpt from mine
[General] StartWithLastProfile=1 Version=2
[Profile5] Name=default-release IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/bw8o59d9.default-release
Of particular interest is the isrelative setting and of course the path for the profile you are moving.
If it isrelative=1 you did not move your profile originally, you changed the local directory in account settings
In that case you need to move the profile that is configured in the profiles sub directory shown in the path statement. it is a sub directory of the folder profile.ini is stored in. So Windows key +R and typing %appdata%\Thunderbird will open windows file manager in the correct location to start drilling down to the profiles folder. (it is relative to the location used for the profile.ini file.
Then move the data from the local directories of the accounts to a new drive E:.
Then access the account settings in Thunderbird and correctly state the location of the local directories. Then you need to access the account settings and set the local directory to whatever the new "drive E:" is.