Moving your profile folder

The following all involve the same basic steps and are thus explained together on this page:

• Changing the location of your Thunderbird profile folder
• Migrating Thunderbird mail, address books, and settings from one computer to another
• Migrating mail, address books, and settings from Netscape 7 to Thunderbird
• Migrating mail, address books, and settings from the Mozilla Suite to Thunderbird

In each case, you will be moving the contents of an existing profile folder in Thunderbird, Netscape, or Mozilla to a different location, so do not proceed until you have found on your computer the profile folder whose contents you want to move.

Three basic steps are then required:

1. Create a new Thunderbird profile. If you are launching Thunderbird for the first time it will create a default profile for you, in the default location. If you are not using Thunderbird for the first time or if you wish to create a new profile in a location of your own choice, you should instead use the profile manager. Once you have created the new profile, make sure to exit Thunderbird before continuing.

2. Copy the entire contents of your existing Thunderbird/Netscape/Mozilla profile folder (everything inside the xxxxxxxx.slt folder, including all subfolders) to the profile folder you created in Step 1. If you are prompted about whether you want to overwrite files in the new profile folder, select "Yes."

3. Edit prefs.js to reflect the new profile folder location. Find the prefs.js file in your new profile folder, open it with a text editor such as Notepad, and replace all instances of the old profile folder location with the new profile folder location. For example, replace all instances of "C:\\Documents and Settings\\UserName\\Application Data\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\default\\xxxxxxxx.slt" (typical default profile location on Windows XP) with "C:\\NewLocation\\NewProfile\\yyyyyyyy.slt" (the new profile location). When finished, save the prefs.js file.

Launch Thunderbird and verify that your mail and settings have been migrated succesfully. If not, then exit Thunderbird, go back to Step 3 and check carefully to make sure that all instances of the old profile folder location have been replaced correctly with the new profile folder location.