backing up Thunderbird without mozbackup

[Anubis]

I know of the mozbackup utility and have used it before. however this time i forgot to use it to backup my thunderbird stuff before i started tearing down a computer to reuse parts for a new one.

Is there anyway to backup the data and restore it without the tool? i still have the HDD its installed on and all that and it has not been formatted. i "can" do a pseudo rebuild of that comp to get it booting into windows to use mozbackup but it will be a PITA. was curious if i could do it with the drive mounted as an external on the new comp

 

[lxskllr]

Copy the user folder over.

 

[Anubis]

that simple? things are never that simple

 

[lxskllr]

that simple? things are never that simple

It's pretty easy. If you have important stuff in your new install, you'll want to back it up just in case something bad happens, but nothing bad should happen. I've never used a backup utility. I copy over the data I need from folders.

 

[Berryracer]

I use MozBackup to backup Firefox, Thunderbird, or PostBox. Works like a charm every single time. No need to waste time looking for folders manually IMO but to each his own

 

[Anubis]

which folder then
the one in users\appdata\roaming?

 

[Berryracer]

• Select Run... from the Start menu.
• Type "%appdata%" (without the quotes).
• Hit Return.
• Open the Thunderbird folder.
• Go to the Profiles folder.
• Now open the folder of your Mozilla Thunderbird profile (probably "********.default" where the '*'s stand for random characters) and the folder beneath it.

 

[Berryracer]

To restore your Mozilla Thunderbird Profile from a backup location:
First, create a new profile in Mozilla Thunderbird. You will overwrite this new profile with the data you want to recover or copy. If your current default profile does not contain any data you want to preserve, this step is not necessary, and you can overwrite that profile.

• Make sure Mozilla Thunderbird is not running.
• On Windows, select Run... from the Start menu and type "thunderbird.exe -profilemanager". Click OK.
• On Mac OS X, type "/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -profilemanager" in a Terminal window and hit Enter.
• On Linux, type "thunderbird -profilemanager" on a command line and hit Enter.
• Click Create Profile....
• Click Next.
• Type "Restoration Profile" under Enter new profile name:.
• Note the path given under Your user settings, preferences, bookmarks and mail will be stored in:.
• Click Finish.
• Click Exit.

Now, it's time to copy the files:

• Open the folder containing your Mozilla Thunderbird profile backup.
• Highlight and copy all files.
• Open the desired new profile directory.
  • Make sure you choose the folder noted when you created your restoration profile. The folder name should end in ".Restoration Profile" if you created a specific profile or ".default" if you want to overwrite your current default profile.
• Highlight all files and move them to the trash.
• Paste the files copied from your backup location.

If you created a special "Restoration Profile" profile, you can rename it, of course.

 

[Anubis]

sweet thanks. ill try it when i get home

 

[lxskllr]

I usually just drag/drop. Delete the profile folder in the new install(from /appdata/local), and copy the old profile over.

 

[Anubis]

thanks berryracer that worked fine. however i had to paste the stuff into the auto created default and not the "restoration profilee" i made for it to work. but otherwise worked fine