Thunderbird Profile Sync Across Platforms and Computers
This is not an IMAP vs. POP question. I have installed Thunderbird and linked it via IMAP to my institutional email. Everything there works great. Using Provider and Lightning I have successfully integrated my calendar and made it editable. It works perfectly.
The problem I now face: I have multiple computers: Desktops at the institution and at home and a laptop. I also run multiple OS - Linux and Windows, dedicated installations on separate computers.
On my laptop running windows I installed Thunderbird and got everything working well. I started building my address book and more. However, I find that, in order to mirror this installation and any changes I make, I'll need to do everything all-over again on each computer. Worse, any changes I make on one computer when it comes to my profile and preferences, will not be shared by the others unless I copy/paste the proper profile file to the proper place.
These days we live in the cloud, so, like other email programs, I'm wondering if anyone out there has a way to streamline the profile issue and point Thunderbird to one spot in the cloud where there is one profile and all computers and operating systems share it. I have multiple cloud accounts I could use (google, dropbox, onedrive).
Thanks for your help.
Asịsa ahọpụtara
Another user posed the same question:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1271806
You can't sync every setting between computers, but you certainly don't have to repeat the setup on every mirror. Copy the Thunderbird folder from the source computer and insert it in any other computer, no matter the OS.
As for storing the profile on something like Dropbox, see this post for a discussion of the pros and cons.
Consider running portable TB from a flash drive. which would at least work for Windows computers.
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Asịsa Ahọpụtara
Another user posed the same question:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1271806
You can't sync every setting between computers, but you certainly don't have to repeat the setup on every mirror. Copy the Thunderbird folder from the source computer and insert it in any other computer, no matter the OS.
As for storing the profile on something like Dropbox, see this post for a discussion of the pros and cons.
Consider running portable TB from a flash drive. which would at least work for Windows computers.
Thank you sfhowes,
I know that Mozilla recently dropped Thunderbird as one of its supported open source programs, which is unfortunate as it would be great to have a sync feature like Firefox does, keeping my browser standardized wherever I use it and on any operating system.
I suppose the portable TB from a flash drive is the best way to go for now. It's a clunky solution, but better than nothing.
Thank you for all the help you put out there btw. I've seen your contributions on a lot of posts and they've always been very helpful and posted with professionalism and knowledge in easily digestible language.
Hi, The problem with the given solution is that it is fine for initial syncing during installation. I want to sync the settings every time I make a change in say, e-mail signatures, when I add a new account, e-mail composition settings, add a new plug-in/add-on, etc.
This will not be possible even if I sync the profiles on cloud based storage services because the profile files are huge to sync every time I make a small change which is of some KBs. The whole file will be syncing when I make small changes. That's because the profile has e-mails also in that file. If e-mails can be removed, I think the file will become smaller but, still large enough to be synced for every change.
Also, if its a burden on mozilla servers to keep/sync this data, we can use our own cloud storage service but mozilla could give a syncing program with in thunderbird for proper syncing over those cloud storage services.
I know this topic has been discussed a lot of times and the only solution on internet is syncing profile only. Please make it like we sync accounts on firefox where bookmarks, passwords, history, etc., is synced.
Please let me know if there is a new solution to this or if this can be added as a feature request.
It would be great if you could solve this! Thanks.
This feature has been discussed for 12 years. You can follow the progress and add comments here: