I copied my profile but the inbox disappeared (the profiles are exactly the same)
I've been using TB for years on multiple computers at the same time so I'm expert at moving profiles. This never happened to me and am at a loss. I just bought a new notebook, win 10, and installed TB on the SD expansion. I copied the entire profile of the desktop (linux) and put it in the SD then told TB to use that profile. Everything went perfect. I was away for work a week and used my mail flawlessly. Then I got home, copied back the entire profile in the desktop pc (same name, same destination it had before) and expected to find everything there. But, when I opened TB the inbox was empty. The other folders (sent, trash...) were there, the archives were there, the subfolders are there with all their emails. But the inbox is empty. In properties it says 0 mails 0kb space on disk. But the file the local folder link points to (...Mail/local folders/Inbox) is 950 MB, not zero! And it's absolutely identical to the one I use on the netbook, but for the fact that in the netbook the properties are 950mb space and 5000something mails. It seems as if TB can't read the file. Worse thing is, as I close and reopen TB even the inbox subfolders disappear and only the sent, trash etc remain. I tried recreating the index, tried reiapring the folder. Any ideas? I'm desperate!
All Replies (3)
I don't think copying profiles frequently between computers is a good idea. Neither is accumulating messages in Inbox, as that increases the risk of mail file corruption.
Wrt the problem at hand see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Move_to_a_new_PC#Moving_from_Windows_to_OSX_or_Linux
Thanks for the advice. I know that moving profiles isn't wise but until now I had to do it just twice a year and it was an acceptable risk. Now I'll have to do it once a week and I reckon it's a huge risk, but I don't know how else to access my mails in their most recent version from all my devices. I won't have enough bandwidth to use an online service. Previously, in linux I already had everything configured correctly, path wise. I forgot to say that my desktop is dual boot with another win10 and that the thunderbird profile was shared with the windows installation too, and was stored in a windows partition. So I had the windows TB pointed to the profile with the correct path in profiles.ini, and the linux TB pointed to the same profile with the path /media/me/dati/thunderbird/.../nuibivty.whatever in the Options and profile manager, and everything used to work from both OS's.
Anyway, your advice didn't solve my problem but gave me a very helpful idea. Trying to copy the profile again and again I had messed things up so much that in the end after 3-4 tries and some hours after my post TB didn't see any profile at all. Then you reminded me that I had the windows installation too... I seldom boot it and I had forgotten it existed! so I did this: I booted the desktop pc in win10. I started the profile manager and created a new profile in the folder where the old one was stored. I copied in the new one the entire profile from the notebook. And BAM! the TB running in the desktop pc under win 10 works!! I tried creating a new profile in linux giving it the path of the new one on windows, but still the inbox remains empty as before.
So now I'm stuck with the same problem I had this morning, but at least the windows TB can access the emails. To me that's acceptable, even if not optimal. Still I wish it could work from linux too.
Now I have two identical profiles in 2 computers but they're under different profile names. I hope this doesn't create problems when I synch/copy next week. I'll use this week to further sort inbox emails out to divide them in more folders. I've been planning it for years, now I'll have to find the time. Thanks again, if these developments give you more ideas I'm all ears
Modified by xenarulz
Now I'll have to do it once a week and I reckon it's a huge risk, but I don't know how else to access my mails in their most recent version from all my devices.
Use IMAP.