Move Thunderbird Mail Profiles in Windows 7 and Vista


Want to install Windows 7 on your machine but don’t want to lose your Thunderbird settings and emails?
Here is how you move your entire Thunderbird profile to your newly installed Windows 7 box, or Vista. You’ll be able to open Thunderbird on your new Windows 7 computer (or Vista) and instantly have all your old profiles, passwords, and even emails at your disposal.
You can do this from or to Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.


MOVE YOUR THUNDERBIRD PROFILE BETWEEN COMPUTERS

1) on your current machine (let’s assume it’s Vista) open up a Windows Explorer window
2) in the address bar type in the location where your Thunderbird profile is located. Usually this is something like
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

(you can just type it in like this if you want, or click your way to this location. Up to you.)
You’ll see 3 things:
a) one folder named Profiles
b) configuration file named  profiles
c) registry.dat
Copy ALL THESE FILES, INCLUDING EVERYTHING IN THE PROFILES FOLDER. I like to put this stuff on a USB stick.
On the computer you want to copy your previous Thunderbird profile to go to
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
Yes, it’s the same in Vista and Windows 7. XP looks different.
Move (or Paste) everything you copied from your old machine to this location. (Again, you must have the profile configuration file, the registry.dat file, and the Profiles folder with everything in it.)
You can override any files and folders because you only need what you took from your old machine. If this doesn’t make sense let me know but it’s pretty straight forward.
Done!


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