Thunderbird: Import Profile Settings

Although I’m using Windows 7 you can transfer profiles easily on any operating system.

Prerequisites

First of all download Thunderbird and make a new installation.

Copy the old Profile

In Windows press WINDOWS KEY + R and enter %APPDATA%\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ into the run prompt and click OK.

In Linux the equivalent folder should be something like /home/user/.thunderbird/profiles/

You should see a folder name with ending with .default, something random like lirivjsy.default. Rename the folder to backup.

Thunderbird Profile

Now you need to locate the old profile Thunderbird used. Searching for “profiles.ini” should land you one directory up. Some possible locations for Windows will be:

Windows 2000-XP:

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C:\Document and Settings\YOUR USERNAME HERE\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profile

Windows Vista-7:

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C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME HERE\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

Once you’ve located the old profile folder copy the profile you want (typically the one ending in .default) copy the folder to the new installation directory, which should be similar to:

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%APPDATA%\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\

You should now have both profiles in the right (new) directory. It should look similar to the image below.

Thunderbird Profile

Updating the Preferences

In Thunderbird each profile has its own preferences and settings. Go into the profile folder you copied (the one still ending in .default) and find prefs.js. You can edit this Javascript file in Notepad or Web Authoring software like Dreamweaver.

There are a few settings we will need to alter slightly (those pointing to old directories). The ones I needed to edit and update were:

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user_pref("browser.download.dir", "C:\\Users\\username\\Documents");
user_pref("mail.compose.attach.dir", "C:\\Users\\username");
user_pref("mail.root.imap", "C:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\0gfgrac6.default\\ImapMail");
user_pref("mail.root.none", "C:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\0gfgrac6.default\\Mail");
user_pref("mail.root.pop3", "C:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\0gfgrac6.default\\Mail");

The amount you’ll have to change depends on how many accounts you have. Change the directories to the new one. For example:

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user_pref("mail.root.imap", "C:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\0gfgrac6.default\\ImapMail");

Will become…

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user_pref("mail.root.imap", "X:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\lirivjsy.default\\ImapMail");

Once you’ve finished updating all the directories (remember to replace the old profile name with the new one we renamed to .backup) save the file.
The last thing left to do is to rename the copied profile. Name it exactly the same as the backup we created except replace .backup with .default. Now when you start Thunderbird your previous settings should be restored.