I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man's

William Blake

Transferring Thunderbird to Vista

July 17, 2009

Computers

(No comments)

First, download Thunderbird on new system,

Cancel the ‘Account Wizard’ so as not to have two copies of messages from the server.

Following directions found on-line, first find the xxxxx.default file, which was in the directory c:\Documents and Settings\mikes\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles

On the new computer, running Thunderbird seems to have created a default profile in:

C:\Users\mike\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

[Side Note:  the AppData directory appears to be hidden]

It initially had this content:
07/17/2009  09:18 PM    <DIR>          .
07/17/2009  09:18 PM    <DIR>          ..
07/17/2009  09:34 PM    <DIR>          Cache
07/08/2009  07:15 AM    <DIR>          OfflineCache
07/14/2009  09:52 PM        31,862,784 urlclassifier3.sqlite
06/22/2009  10:43 PM         2,027,342 XPC.mfl
07/17/2009  09:11 PM           998,484 XUL.mfl
3 File(s)     34,888,610 bytes

So, try copying all the old files to the xxxxx.default directory and see what happens.

Nope, Thunderbird is not convinced.

So, search some more and find MozBackup.   Very nice!

I first removed all the files I had attempted to copy into the xxx.default directory, then did these steps (as seen on the internet), though I think I ended up doing it just as one step, it didn’t seem like the ‘account settings only’ option worked the way I thought it would:

  1. Download & install MozBackup on both old & new machines.
  2. On the old machine run MozBackup to create a backup of Thunderbird mail account settings.
  3. On the old machine run MozBackup a second time to create a backup of Thunderbird mail messages, address books, extensions, and other settings.
  4. On the new machine run MozBackup and choose restore. Point to the file created in step 2.
  5. On the new machine run MozBackup and choose restore. Point to the file created in step 3.

Wait, that wasn’t a Thunderbird directory at all, my bad.  But all seems to be in order anyway.  It also apparently is using a different format, instead of having a bunch of folders and sub-folders, it’s all in two files:

Directory of C:\Users\mike\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default

07/17/2009  10:36 PM    <DIR>          .
07/17/2009  10:36 PM    <DIR>          ..
07/17/2009  09:14 PM         1,011,812 XPC.mfl
07/17/2009  10:36 PM         1,244,638 XUL.mfl