Importing old Thunderbird mailbox - COMPLETE

[Eyesee]

Has anyone a solution to importing an older Thunderbird mailbox into the current one.

Have recently upgraded PCs and want to import the mailbox from my old PC into the new one.

The Thunderbird Import option allows you to import from Outlook Express etc, but not from Thunderbird, at least not that I can see anyway.

Thanks

Ian C

[MaryA]

No I couldn't find a way to import or export either, but if you go to your Tools> Options> you will see where your folder settings are saved so that you can find the mailbox in file manager.  I'm not on the same PC at present so off the top of my head I believe there were two files in the folder, copy these onto a flashdrive and then go to your new PC and look for the same folder settings - if you have changed from XP to Windows 7 then the route will be different but not difficult to find.  Copy your files from the flash drive into the correct folder, now I found that if I copied them into the "Inbox" folder it gave me a second Inbox, so I just put them into the "Local Folders", doesn't really matter since they are all old ones anyway, re-open Thunderbird and hey presto, they were all viewable.

Hope this makes sense.

[stannarp]

Hi Ian,

I recently had to do this for a client after her hard drive got replaced, fortunately I had backed up her entire Thunderbird profile, and was able to restore it using the process described here:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6928428_transfer-thunderbird-new-pc.html

This is a similar process:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2224367_email-settings-mail-windows-pc.html

On a Windows XP PC the profile will probably be here:  C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\

On a Windows 7 or Vista PC's the profile will be here:  C:\users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\

You MIGHT need to enable view of hidden folders or files to access these folders:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic43032.html (Windows XP)

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial151.html (Windows 7)

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Patricia

[[Ray]]

Hi

Haven't tried any of these yet (got the url from someone who has)
One is supposedly an import/export function for Tbird
http://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/index-en.html


Patricia's "ehow new pc" solution (XP) worked for me too


Ray

[stannarp]

Hi all,

Have tried some of the import / export extensions for Thunderbird and have (in the end) resorted to good old fashioned profile copying as the most simple and effective way to move mail from one PC to another

The problem I've found with some of the the import / export extensions is that they are not as reliably updated to work with newer versions of Thunderbird as FireFox extensions are...so an extension that gets used to export stuff on one PC can't be used to import on another one with a newer version of Thunderbird running.  Very frustrating, so I've gone back to the profile copying thing, at least it works reliably as long as everything is copied and pasted into the correct paths

Regards,

Patricia

[Alan b]

You could do it by copying the folder on your old computer where the mail is stored to your new computer via USB drive or something.

You might need to show hidden files but they are usualy stored in:

My Computer > C Dive > YourName > Application Data > Roaming > Thunderbird

You could back up/copy the entire Thunderbird folder and then copy it to the same loaction on your new computer. When you then start Thunderbird on your new computer it will locate your mail folders and stuff.

[Eyesee]

Thanks for suggestions everyone. Have old mailboxes on new machine now.

Ian C