Having trouble migrating old mail to new computer
I'm trying to move my wife's old email from an old computer to a new computer. I've done this before successfully when I moved myself from Windows XP to Linux Mint, but it's been a long time. I copied the file with the weird name xxyyzz.default in her C:\Users\Cyn\Appdata\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles directory to a backup drive. Then I tried to drop it into place in Linux on her new computer. Mail worked, but all the old stuff was gone. Looking at the contents of various things, I decided that the version of Thunderbird was too old for this to work, and it might be easier to first move it to a Windows computer, running the same old version of Thunderbird that she was using. I have another computer loaded with Windows 7 that could use, so I installed the same old version on Thunderbird on the Win 7 system (TB 78.12)., with the hope that if I could see the old mail (12,000 messages and 500 contacts), I could upgrade Thunderbird until I was running a modern system and would be able to move the stuff to Linux easily. Still no luck. I can make mail work, but can't see her old mail. I think my basic mistake was that I only copied the Profile file itself, an only from the Local directory. I've learned now that there are two Profiles for each account, one in the Local directory and one in the Roaming directory. Do I need both of them? The folder has only a couple of files in it, with the bulk of the information buried in a file called "entries", which is inside the "Cache2" folder. The help system seems to say that is is very easy to do, but somehow I just can't make it work. Thanks in advance.
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The first problem is that the relevant folder is in ...\AppData\Roaming\...., not ...\AppData\Local\..., which only contains cached data. If you copy the entire ...\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird folder to the same location on another computer, the move should be successful. Or, if transferring from Windows to Linux, delete the contents (not the folder itself) of the profile folder in Linux, and copy in the contents (not the folder) of the Windows profile folder. You might also have to delete the pkcs11.txt file in the Linux profile so the stored passwords are read. The \AppData\Local folder is not necessary to transfer between computers.
Drat! Looks like I copied the wrong file. I didn't realize that there are two of them. I only copied one file back when I moved my mail, and it looks like I copied the correct one by accident. I don't have access to the old computer any more. Is there any way to access anything in the cached data? Would the address book be in there somewhere? Thanks.
I don't think there's anything useful in the Local folder, or at least anything that is easily recovered. If you have an account like gmail, it's possible to import or sync Google Contacts, and if your accounts are IMAP, the mail is probably still on the mail server, and will download to TB when the accounts are added.
Another thought. I have a copy of the correct file from a backup that I did about two years ago. I guess I could put that one in and I would have a copy of her mail system as of two years ago, right? I could at least salvage most of her address book and a lot of her old messages, but I'd still be missing two years of her mail. (About 3 to 4000 messages and whatever contacts she created in the last two years). That's a start. What would happen if I dropped in the old mail file and at the same time the current file full of cached stuff? Would it find the stuff in the cache? Too much to hope for I guess. Thanks.
Copying in an old profile might work, but since the TB versions would be quite different, it would probably be better to copy in the mail and contacts manually. The mail is contained in mbox files, which are in the ImapMail/<imapservername>, Mail/<popservername> and Mail/Local Folders (and sbd subfolders). Mbox files have no extension and are named after folders, e.g. Inbox or Sent. Copy them into Mail/Local Folders of the active profile, with TB closed. Address books, .mab files in the old profile, can be imported to TB (click Import button in TB 102 Address Book).
I think the caching works by first reading the header of a message and then searching the cache for a match. I don't think it works in reverse.