Sphere

I had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows XP. I backed up my Thunderbird Mail directory created with Thunderbird V1.1, I think. Anyway, after reinstalling windows I installed the latest version of Thunderbird (1.5, I think) and placed all the contents of my backed up MAIL folder into the sub-directory created by T-Bird, called 23hyi8e2.default. That appears to be where it wants to store all the mail.

My problem: Thunderbord is NOT recognizing ANY of my transferred mail folders or files! It's like they are not even there! Please help me! I have 250MB of emails important to me to keep and now have no way to access or read them!

By the way, Thunderbird never gave me an option to import mail from existing Thunderbird mail files - sort of silly. Can it really be that difficult an option to offer? Never mind. Any help would be appreciated. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Thank You!

tdinc

Double check and make sure of your procedure
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

http://www.mozilla.org/support/thund...aq#moveprofile

it should work

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Sphere

wow - that was a fast reply!! I wil check it out - um - is this going to be a difficult, sort of drawn-out process?

Sphere

Thanks by the way - appreciate the input. Anyone else got a quick fix for me?

tdinc

If you exported your backup correctly from the old version of thunderbird you shouldnt have a prob with the new version. It could also be a profile issue. let us know how it goes and post back....

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j79zlr

For future reference, this program will do the backups for you: http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

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Sphere

will do...

tdinc

If all else fails, download and install the version you were using before
import your backup with the version you were using. then try again with the latest version. REMEMBER: with Thunderbird you should uninstall the old ver. before you install the new version.....I know you said it was from a fresh windows install. but i wanted to point it out.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thun...admap-1.5.html

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Sphere

Its not working... I followed the instructions. I already tried uninstaling my new version and reinstalling my old and yes this was from a fresh windows install...I am very tired (and very sad) - need to go to bed. Anyone viewing this who can offer further assitance - greatly appreciated, thanks.

tdinc

I belive you have a corupt back-up....hmmm

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American Zombie

Maybe the wrong files were backed up.

Sphere

ok maybe this will help. Here is a screenshot of the folders I copied the the Thunderbird Mail folder:

Sphere

um - ok well that didn't work too well. I'm not sure wy my 35KB jpeg image screnshot is not showing up here...

Sphere

i think I figures out how to get my email back - thanks so muchfor your help!

Son Goku

j79zlr's link looks hopeful that it might work for backing up and restoring old email archives accross installs. But the first links provided look to be more to restoring profile data, rather then email archives (aka the saved messages folders) themselves... Are you sure it will restore these?

I only ask, because my experience with Netscape (in the earlier days prior to the Firefox project itself, when Mozilla was also more a development platform for latter versions of Netscape), was this. In Netscape 4.x I had no problems with reinstalling, after a fresh format. I didn't even have to mess with backups or anything (as I don't have to with Outlook Express now). Just pointed it to my old profile folder (which either was on another hard drive, or restored after a complete backup of the Netscape profiles folder), and it would prompt that a profile exists, do I want to use it. Yes, and it would just open it up like no reinstall of the computer ever happened.

However, Netscape 6, was different, and I lost some messages with a reinstall. As I kept the old Netscape 4.5x profile, I hadn't lost too much. Switched to OE, and just imported from there. Mind you, the older version didn't have this problem with archiving old email messages themselves, or getting to them on other installs, and was one thing with Netscape 6 I didn't like. A little surprised if this never got addressed/reverted to the old way of doing things, which is also similar to Outlook's/OE's way of doing things...

If anyone figures out this restore of old email messages themselves (and not just profile settings) accross installs, they got some rep comming. That was one hell of an annoying thing, as I tend to archive email in the email program, going back to 1997 even, myself. In some ways, the old messages (as unrecoverable data) are more important then some setting changes, that can easily be reset... Until then, I'm sticking with OE, which seems to have no issue just pointing to an old archive of email messages, and using that instead of one created on a new install...

BTW, wonder why the poll is unrelated to the thread itself?