This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Moved TBird from old Win10 PC to new Win 11 PC, but none of the profiles or email show up

  • 1 reply
  • 0 have this problem
  • 23 views
  • Last reply by david

more options

This morning I copied the entire .../Roaming/Thunderbird folder to a server for storage. Once I built the new Win 11 PC and installed Thunderbird, I then copied the saver Thunderbird folder back onto the new PC in the Roaming folder, over writing the old data. In both operations, Thunderbird was closed. Now when I open Thunderbird it just keeps asking for a new profile to be set up. There is no evidence Thunderbird is using my old data. BTW, I have 3 email accounts that are part of my saved files and all have email associated with them. So, how do I get the new installation to recogfnize the old data?

This morning I copied the entire .../Roaming/Thunderbird folder to a server for storage. Once I built the new Win 11 PC and installed Thunderbird, I then copied the saver Thunderbird folder back onto the new PC in the Roaming folder, over writing the old data. In both operations, Thunderbird was closed. Now when I open Thunderbird it just keeps asking for a new profile to be set up. There is no evidence Thunderbird is using my old data. BTW, I have 3 email accounts that are part of my saved files and all have email associated with them. So, how do I get the new installation to recogfnize the old data?
Attached screenshots

All Replies (1)

more options

I am puzzled why there are five profiles for a fresh install. Somewhere, something went wrong because the process you described has worked 100% for others. One thought: were the versions of Thunderbird the same. That is, release level to release level or beta to beta. That should be verified. Beyond that, my first suggestion would be to exit TB, erase the ...appdata\roaming\thunderbird folder and try again to copy the old profile in, and restart tb. If that fails, there is a corruption somewhere in the profile. In that case, I would exit TB and copy desired components from the old profile into the new: items such as abook.sqlite and any folders in Mail\Local folders. If any POP accounts. start TB, set up the account, exit, and then copy in the saved Mail\<POPaccount>folders in and the restart TB.