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I messed up restoring old profile on new Mac and now I can't get into Thunderbird.

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by tjohnson

lillis
lillis
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I had two finder windows open and accidentally changed the name of my old profile (the one I wanted to use), rather than change the 8-character chain in front of the new default profile that was created when I downloaded Thunderbird on the new machine. I even went so far as to throw away what I thought was the new profile and had to drag it back out of the trash. Now the profile I want to use is in the library folder for Thunderbird. It is also in the place where it was created when I first backed up this profile.

When I try to open Thunderbird, I get an error message, "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I've tried uninstalling Thunderbird and re-installing, but the same thing happens.

I had two finder windows open and accidentally changed the name of my old profile (the one I wanted to use), rather than change the 8-character chain in front of the new default profile that was created when I downloaded Thunderbird on the new machine. I even went so far as to throw away what I thought was the new profile and had to drag it back out of the trash. Now the profile I want to use is in the library folder for Thunderbird. It is also in the place where it was created when I first backed up this profile. When I try to open Thunderbird, I get an error message, "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I've tried uninstalling Thunderbird and re-installing, but the same thing happens.

All Replies (1)

tjohnson
tjohnson
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Your Thunderbird profiles are stored inside the Profiles folder. Navigate to the folder above it and open the file named profiles.ini in a text editor.

The last part of the profile path listed in the INI file is the old name of the profile which you accidentally renamed. Rename the profile that you can't access to match the name listed in the INI file.

Modified by tjohnson