See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder_-_Thunderbird#Use_the_Profile_Manager_to_move_your_profile

I need further assistance. I believe I've found a backed up profile that may save my bacon, but when I try to open the profile manager I fail.

The profile folder is located on drive L: and I'd like to have Thunderbird try and use it.

Thunderbird resides in the folder "Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird" on drive C:

From the start button run window I'm typing as follows: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\Thunderbird.exe -P

Which returns "Windows cannot find 'C:\Program'

Trying just Thunderbird.exe -P I get a cannot find Thunderbird error.

What am I doing wrong? Can anyone give me the exact thing I should be typing if the problem is that I'm not typing the command correctly?

Thanks,

dave

You need quotes round a filename or pathname that includes spaces, thus:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\Thunderbird.exe" -P

I'd do it by copying then modifying an existing shortcut.

One further observation: since you have mentioned "C:\\Programs..." I infer this is Windows. In which case, your

L://MailExp-/Profiles-20111130-1111/Mail/

probably needs to be

L:\\MailExp-\Profiles-20111130-1111\Mail\

O.K., and THANK YOU, that got me into the profile editor, but I'm still not getting the results I need. Not even sure if I can, but let me try and explain what I'm attempting.

The Mozilla help pages are not helping me probably because I'm mostly finding them confusing; old tired brain I guess.  ;-(

As I mentioned, I had a total HD crash on drive C of my winXP mail box. While I don't have a current backedup profile, I actively store the mail in M:\\MailExp-\Profiles-20111130-1111\ in the Mail\ and ExternalMailFolders which I believe is the standard way.

Prior to the crash the mail storage drive was labelled "M:"; after the crash it got renamed "L", so I have since returned it to "M" so it would coincide with the original profile(s).

I also have an old profile on Drive H:

Both the old profile and start of mail storage were begun in Dec 2011; so I'm hoping, perhaps unreasonably, that the old backup should be referencing the saved mail.

I've tried a couple of ways to get Thunderbird to see that mail backup but without success.

Perhaps I could get some specific direction on how I go about accomplishing such.

The old profile which I don't want to over write quite yet can obviously be copied to a different drive but here is what I have at the moment.

The stored mail is at: M:\\MailExp-\Profiles-20111130-1111\Mail\ - and- M:\\MailExp-\Profiles-20111130-1111\ExtralMailFolders

The old profile is at: H:\Thunderbird\Profiles

My goal is to have Thunderbird open up with ALL the stored mail in the correct folders showing in that left hand panel which I guess is obvious to anyone familiar with the program.

But I can't make that happen and truthfully don't know if it is possible, but I'm truly hoping so.

TIA,

dave

Multiple profiles are always messy, because there is no easy way to merge them.

I'd plump for one which seems useful and set that up as the working profile in the profile manager, and then, in Windows Explorer, copy into its Local Folders the mbox files that you need from other profiles. (Close Thunderbird before making any such changes to its profile.) These files are those without extensions, such as Inbox. You don't need, for now, their accompanying .msf files. These folders should then appear in Thunderbird under Local Folders, and you can then move or copy messages from them into working accounts if that is useful.

One practice I always discourage is to move individual mail stores (via the "Local Directory" setting in Account Settings) since this detaches the mail store and makes the moving of profiles even harder. I am not clear from your description whether or not you have been doing this.

Are address books also a concern here? You can move *.mab files from one profile to another, but those representing user-defined address books will need to be imported (after you have moved them), using the https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html add-on.

Thanks to all for your help and suggestions. This problem turned out to be many faceted, including my using an old a version of Thunderbird that required updating, two bad hard drives (one brand new out of the box), and lots of lost files that fortunately I was able to recover and use to reset everything. Just finished getting everything functional a few hours ago.

Again my thanks for taking the time to help!

dave