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

How can I prevent thunderbird to start if the profile is missing?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by svlad2009

more options

I don't want thunderbird to start if a profile (folder) is missing. This works in my "old" thunderbird installation (68.10.0), however on a new machine it automatically creates the missing profile (folder).

My old thunderbird installation behaves like this:

If the profile is not there, it does not start, instead it shows the following message: "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." And this is the desired behavior.

How can I prevent thunderbird to automatically create the profile folder path and create an new profile if the path is missing?

More precisely: How can I prevent thunderbird to start if the profile is missing?

I don't want thunderbird to start if a profile (folder) is missing. This works in my "old" thunderbird installation (68.10.0), however on a new machine it automatically creates the missing profile (folder). My old thunderbird installation behaves like this: If the profile is not there, it does not start, instead it shows the following message: "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." And this is the desired behavior. How can I prevent thunderbird to automatically create the profile folder path and create an new profile if the path is missing? More precisely: How can I prevent thunderbird to start if the profile is missing?

All Replies (1)

more options

I have tried to duplicate your case on TB v78.3 but I could not do it - attached picture where the test profile name was edited by me and when I tried to start TB have mentioned me that warning... What TB version do you have? Are you sure you start a profile which doesn't exist?

Anyway, as an alternative solution you might start TB from a shortcut to a batch file - and that batch file to contain a check if some file exist and if yes to start TB and if not to show you on the screen that the file is missing - a general sample below:

 IF EXIST filename. (
 start tb.exe path
 ) ELSE (
 echo filename. missing
 )

Modified by svlad2009