Back Up or Copy Your Mozilla Thunderbird Profile (Email, Settings,...)

Find Your Mozilla Thunderbird Profile Directory
To locate and open the folder where Mozilla Thunderbird keeps your profile including settings and messages:
On Windows:
* 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.

On Mac OS X:
* Open your home folder.
* Go to the Library folder.
* Open the Thunderbird and then the Profiles folders.
* Open your profile's directory (probably "********.default" where the '*'s stand for random characters).

On Linux:
* Go to the ".thunderbird" directory in your home "~" directory.
* Open the profile directory (probably "********.default" where the '*'s stand for random characters).

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.
o 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.