Comments on: Mozilla Thunderbird – Changing the File Location with Windows XP

By: Doogie

Doogie — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:34:52 +0000

Hi Mark

You did not change the location correctly. Thunderbird only wants to start new accounts when it cannot find any accounts. It then wants to set up accounts in the default location.

It looks like you had Thunderbird pointed to the data on drive C, but then you deleted the data on drive C. The same thing with drive D. You can only point Thunderbird to one location at a time.

If you lost files, you will not be able to recover them unless you have a backup. The whole point with changing the location is to make it easier to do backups.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 08:55:17 +0000

I changed location few months agoo and I am having big problem, I have 9 gb on C: and on D:9 gb profile too, when I remove profile from c: it thunderbird cant finf files and wanna add new accounts.
When i remove profile from d: same thing happens?

I trie to merge c and d folders and use that path but I am missing some files, for about 7 months of mails?

How I can manage and fix that? Please help me

By: Ahsan

Ahsan — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:48:41 +0000

Thanks, your idea is realy great working, I have been searching the information for long time.

By: Amir

Amir — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:43:00 +0000

Thanks for this post. Been wanting to able to do this for a long time. Worked great

By: lesizz

lesizz — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:41:58 +0000

Anyone trying Mani’s procedure, note that in step 3 the file path you specify in TBird needs to point INSIDE the “Local Folders” folder you copied to your new location, otherwise TBird will not see all your old mail files.

By: Miguel Bello

Miguel Bello — Sat, 23 May 2009 15:01:01 +0000

Hi! I saw folder tree but without messages. I tried to solved it moving path, etc. Finally it was a problem of permissions on Windows XP, i’ve made my backup with linux tar an when untar all my profile folders had “Just read” permission. I changed it and i was resolved. Thanks!!

By: Baaab

Baaab — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:08:57 +0000

Anybody ever try setting up an install of FFox or TBird to create a profile directory in a location other than Mozilla’s %Profile%\AppData\…\”random”.default? I’d like to customize an installation for use at our University, where first time a user signs onto a new system, and launches FFox (but TBird operates the same, basically), the application knows to look at the user’s Home Directory on the network. If they have a profile, great. If not, the app creates one ON THE NETWORK, and subsequent launches at that workstation or others LOOKS TO THE NETWORK…

Not a lot of support at Mozilla for this tweaked configuration…

Thanks in advance!

By: Natalie Waibel

Natalie Waibel — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:23:12 +0000

Thank you for your help!

By: Doogie

Doogie — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:22:41 +0000

Hi Colin

If Thunderbird is not finding the e-mail folders in the new location, there is a problem with the path.

Make sure that every character in the path is correct, including any spaces and upper and lower case characters. Either a path is correct or it is not. The path on each PC and Thunderbird installation is going to be different. A single incorrect character invalidates the path.

Make sure that the path is on one line. In the example above it is wrapped.

Make sure that the hash code that Thunderbird creates is correct (xxxxxxxx.default). The hash code for each Thunderbird installation is different.

By: Colin

Colin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:53:27 +0000

I tried all the above – it keeps prompting me for new email adresses and does not appear to be recognizing the path. One problem was that I deleted the profiles -(after copying my entire folder to a new place). Any suggestions