Moving profiles for the Thunderbird e-mail client is a pretty common task we have to do for support partners who get a new office computer, and use Thunderbird. Thankfully, unlike Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird profiles are relatively easy to copy over between computers – thanks Mozilla!
Step 1 : Copying over your existing Thunderbird profile.
Thunderbird profiles are stored at : %APPDATA% \Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\
For more information on data paths, see : http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
We’ll want to copy over the complete Thunderbird directory for ease of transfer, so you can navigate to %APPDATA%\ and copy the entire %APPDATA%\Thunderbird folder over to %APPDATA%\ on the new machine.
Step 2 : Install Thunderbird on new machine.
Step 3 : Done! Launch Thunderbird, and all your data should show.
If for some reason you’ve completed the data transfer, and the correct Thunderbird profile isn’t showing up with your mail accounts – it’s most likely that your profile.ini is pointing to an already existing profile. Maybe you installed Thunderbird before copying the data over, for instance, and created a default profile.
Thankfully, Thunderbird has a ‘Profile Manager’ that can be launched by typing in ‘Thunderbird –profilemanager’ into your Start Menu ‘Run’ dialog box. More details on this can be found here : http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
Good luck with your move, hope this tech tip helps you out with your computer!
