Many times, after a major update, Thunderbird won’t load your old profile, especially if your old Profile folder is very old with different settings and database files than what new update supports. It can also happen if you make some changes manually by going into your Profile folder. For example, if you make any changes in the profiles.ini file and there were some errors, Thunderbird will fail to load your old profile.
Integrate Old Thunderbird Profiles in Thunderbird
But do not worry. Here’s a very simple way to get back your old profile with its old content back into Thunderbird.
In Short: Delete your Profiles.ini file (or keep it somewhere else as a backup), forcing Thunderbird to create a new Profiles.ini file. Then, create a new profile manually and set the location for this profile the same as the old one you want to load.
Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this:
- Open your Profile Folder in computer, if you know where it is. You can also open it directly from Thunderbird. Open Thunderbird, go to ‘Help’. If you cannot see the ‘Tools’ at the top menu bar, press ‘Alt’ in your keyboard to see the menu bar. Then, go to ‘Help’ à Troubleshooting Information. It will open a new tab with all the troubleshooting related information.
- At the top, you will see the ‘Application Basics’ section. Scroll down to find the “Profiles” entry, which is the 2nd last entry in this section. Click on “about:profiles” link that is next to it.
- It will open another new tab “about profiles.” You can see all the profiles that you have created. And maybe, the one you want to load is missing. Do not worry. Click on ‘Open Folder’ that relates to the ‘Root Directory.’ Do not click on “Open Folder” that corresponds to “local Directory,” as that is something different. You want to go to the ‘AppData\Roaming” location, not “AppData\Local.”
- Once you have clicked on “Open Folder,” Windows explorer window will open of the location where the profile is stored. This is a folder where the contents of the Profile is stored, but you do not want to do anything here. Go back a folder where you can see all the available ‘Profiles’ created in Thunderbird. Then go back another folder, and this is where you will find the profiles.ini file.
- Close Thunderbird.
- Either rename ‘profiles.ini’ into something else (like backup profiles.ini) or copy it somewhere safe as a backup.
- Now restart Thunderbird, which forces the client to create another brand new profiles.ini file and new default profiles. It will also ask you to enter your name and email addresses to add your email account. You can click “Cancel.”
- Now again, inside Thunderbird, go to ‘Help’ à Troubleshooting Information à Inside “Application Basics” section, Find ‘Profiles” entry, and then click on “About:profiles” link next to it to go the Profile manager.
- Here, you will see all the newly created default Profiles after you deleted the Profiles.ini file. Click on “Create a New Profile” at the top to open the profile creation wizard.
- Click “Next”
- In the next screen, enter the name of Profile, whatever you want.
- Click on “Choose Folder,” and then browse to the location of your old profile you want to load into Thunderbird. Just single-click on the folder to highlight it and click “Select Folder.” Do not double-click on the Profile folder to open its contents and then click on ‘Select Folder.’
- Click “Finish.”
You have now successfully loaded your old Profile into Thunderbird. If you want, you can delete the newly created default profiles by Thunderbird, and also, set your old profile as default. It’s up to you. Thunderbird will automatically pick up all the data and contents that were stored in your old profile. Hope this has been helpful to you.