Thunderbird - transfer to new OS

openSUSE 13.2 64bit KDE 4.14.9

I am slowly moving to Leap 42.1. I want to copy all necessary Thunderbird files from my 13.2 home directory. Normally I just copy the entire .thunderbird directory but over the years of version changes this has accumulated a lot of junk. What should I be copying?

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I am not right now on my home machine, but if I remember correctly you just need to copy profile directory. Profile directory is defined in file ~/.thunderbird/profiles.ini

Then on new installation you need to change the profiles.ini so that it matches name of your copied profile directory. Hope this helps.

Here is link to another tutorial: http://askubuntu.com/questions/114015/how-do-i-back-up-thunderbird-emails

Every thing is in ~/.thunderbird

Yes, but copying the xxxxxx.default directory as defined in profiles.ini results in all the junk files also being copied as they are under xxxxxx.default.

Delete files in Junk from inside Thunderbird before sending to new system. You can set Thunderbird to delete all Junk files on close down.

I’m sorry! I was unclear in my original post. I used the word “junk” instead of “old, useless, no longer needed files created internally by various versions of Thunderbird over a number of years.” Files that are NOT E-mails. Databases I assume are no longer used.

Look at the date remove any that have not been touched for some time

Thank you. A good and easy solution.

Hehe why I get the big bucks lol!

… that was the last thing the bronc buster said at the Calgary Stampede before he disappeared into the stratosphere.:wink: