Trying to manually migrate between two macs
I am trying to manually migrate my thunderbird accounts from my 2018 mac mini to my new 2021 mac mini M1 and I am having a heck of a time doing it. I have already invested over 4 hours to no avail. Maybe you can help: So I copied the profiles file from the old computer and dragged it over to the desktop of the new computer. I then opened the Thunderbird library folder under Go/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles and have tried both deleting the existing files (and replacing them with the files from the original mac) and also tried just copying the files from the old profile folder and adding them to the two existing files in the new mac profiles folder. I then close the folder, close the program and restart the program and in every instance this is the error message I get: " Profile missing; your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded.....". I've tried every iteration I can think of and the only way the program opens is when I get a fresh install and fill out the fill in's when opening the program. Is there some sort of tool I can use to simplify this process? I am at witts end and I have no idea what I am doing wrong as I have tried everything. I barely understand computer code, so the answer has to be simple for me to understand what to do. I'd pay someone to walk me through it at this point, as I need to get this thing installed. Thanks.
Chosen solution
Okay, I know nothing of MACs, but I will assume TB works similarly. First, move the profile folder to wherever you want it to be. I will assume there is a shortcut on your desktop. On Windows, this is opened with right-click to show properties. The intent is to update the entry that starts TB by adding a parameter to it. The resulting execute line in windows would then show "c:\program files\thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p (The "-p" invokes the Profile Manager. ) Now start TB and a small panel should open to allow profile management. On that panel, click 'create profile' and browse and select the profile you copied over. That should fix it. Remove the -p once all is well. Again, these are steps in Windows and my hope is that these are similar to what MAC needs.
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Chosen Solution
Okay, I know nothing of MACs, but I will assume TB works similarly. First, move the profile folder to wherever you want it to be. I will assume there is a shortcut on your desktop. On Windows, this is opened with right-click to show properties. The intent is to update the entry that starts TB by adding a parameter to it. The resulting execute line in windows would then show "c:\program files\thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p (The "-p" invokes the Profile Manager. ) Now start TB and a small panel should open to allow profile management. On that panel, click 'create profile' and browse and select the profile you copied over. That should fix it. Remove the -p once all is well. Again, these are steps in Windows and my hope is that these are similar to what MAC needs.
Unfortunately, like I stated above, I barely understand Mac, and although helpful to someone who understands Macs AND Windows, your answer could probably help them. I have no clue how to translate your answer to the operations of a mac- nor what to do (I presume) with the terminal program. Ironically, most of the answers I found online to my question, were focused on Windows programs and the Mac answers were very vague. Thanks for the effort, but it doesn't specifically help my situation.