I installed Thunderbird a while back. I now realise i made a mistake in installing from Fedora repo rather than flathub. As a result, clicking on “Open Profile” in TB settings (which is the only advice i can find on locating profile folder) does not work, nothing happens.
I just need to get a full export/backup of my TB data, I’d be grateful if someone could please advise how to find it!
(I have been into Terminal and typed cd ~/.thunderbird - which came back ‘no such file/folder’)
For whatever reason, my profile is not ‘there’. Bear in mind I don’t know what the tilde actually means, home I thought. No such folder in there in Files app either.)
Thanks
There are a couple of aliased commands in fedora workstation that are very useful. l. displays all the hidden files and directories whoss name begins with a . ll displays the same as the normal command ls -l does.
(To see what other aliased commands you already have available and what they do, the command alias will display the alias and the command it is mapped to.)
Using these types of commands allows you to see what is there (files and directories) so you are not caught by surprise with responses such as you displayed above.
Yes, tilde is a shortcut for the home of whatever user you’re currently logged in as.
In your terminal you can do ls -la to see all hidden files and directories. I think for Thunderbird you wanna try ~/.mozilla/thunderbird/. As for the Flatpak, everything is under ~/.var/app/
ls -al shows all files and directories including the hidden ones.
The alias l. shows only the files and directories whose names begin with . as the alias for that is alias l.='ls -d .* --color=auto'
Why was this a mistake? I’m using thunderbird from the RPMs it working.
For me I have these thunderbird files in my home directory.
$ ls -l .thunderbird
total 8
drwx------. 1 barry barry 1624 Mar 28 09:54 2fnznv60.default-release/
drwx------. 1 barry barry 20 Apr 23 2022 dpqceu2e.default/
-rw-r--r--. 1 barry barry 62 Apr 23 2022 installs.ini
-rw-r--r--. 1 barry barry 259 Apr 23 2022 profiles.ini
You could list all the file in your home with ls -la ~ to check what “.” files you have.
Thunderbird from fedora repo works well. Some users prefer the flatpak, but some hate the flatpak, so it is user choice mostly. Not a mistake, merely a different source.
The flatpak thunderbird profile should be under ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/.thunderbird
If you’re accessing from the gnome files app you may need to do Ctrlh to show hidden files.
I used the word mistake because, in this case, I think it was.
I’m using the flatpak but not from flathub. The result (as I have found, and continue to find more ‘issues’) is that quite a few things don’t work. System Handler doesn’t work because TB is isolated/sandboxed (that’s my understanding at least) so it can’t run programs when I click on a file such as an audio attachment or pdf. Other things like clicking into Help/Troubleshooting/OpenProfileFolder doesn’t work, nothing happens. I wish to reinstall from Flathub OR RPM, not too bothered which, I just think the option I took wasn’t optimal as it doesn’t run as nicely.
Thanks very much.
bearing in mind my ignorance here… Am I right in thinking:
That the last part of your string (.thunderbird) IS the PROFILE folder, or is it the folder above?
That the profile folder contains EVERYTHING? (Mails, local folders, account settings… E V E R Y T H I N G?!)
I am worried about losing stuff so just want to make sure I get the right folder to chuck on a USB stick while I make the switch.
thanks to everyone who replied above
Thanks, just to confirm, so the .thunderbird fold is the profile folder. If I want to move all TB data I take everything inside .thunderbird folder and paste inside the 2nd machine’s .thunderbird folder.
Is that right?
Thanks
Copying “.thunderbird” you get ALL Thunderbird profiles.
The reason for having different profiles is you can have like several separated instances of Thunderbird for different usages, like “private” and “work”. Of course one a time, because you close one instance and oper another instance.
Both Firefox and Thunderbird have got a tool for managing profiles that opens from the command shell with “firefox -p” and “thunderbird -p”.
With that tool you can create, delete and rename profiles INSIDE the “.thunderbird” directory.
Actually the “delete” command asks if you really want to remove all the files from the deleted profile or you just want to delete the profile from the list, keeping its files in case you need them.
Usually the installation creates two profiles inside “.thunderbird”, one is “xyz.default.release” and the other is “xyz.default” and the first is the “current” one. Don’t ask me why.
You can add any other profile you like and then select it from the tool above as “current” or you can opt for being asked which profile to load upon opening Thunderbird.
Anyway, keep in mind that the actual email is contained in text files located in the “.thunderbird/profilename/mail” directory. You can move your email, even more so if you use different addresses in the same profile, by copying those files. You should go reading the Thunderbird documentation if/when you need it.
Side note: developers are working on a different format for storing email in Thuderbird so there may be changes sometime in the future.
FYI Thunderbird 128 has been released a few weeks back :
So, right now we’ve Mozilla / Flathub Flatpak offering version 128.0.1ESR but Fedora Flatpak is still using an old version / Gnome Software does not mention the exact version (it’s a pity! same goes for logs) and states just Stable but if you install it you can see it’s version 115.12.1
While transferring my data from an old device to a newer one I faced an issue regarding my Thunderbird data. On both devices I installed the Flatpak version.
I copied my ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/ data but Thunderbird kept prompting me for a new profile.
Turned out that on the new device I installed Fedora Thunderbird Flatpak wheras on the old one I had Flathub Flatpak version.
So, please note that so far if you use Flathub Thunderbird you can’t go back to Fedora Thunderbird Flatpak version and use your archives.
hahah. I actually went into profile to see if I could find any ‘Signature’ options, I was going to list my system info in there. I guess Signatures are out of fashion now, so that was the only other idea I had, to make sure I can’t forget to include the info in posts! (See, I’m a hacker at heart :D)
I was told yesterday by the developer of BetterBird that v128 TB is utterly broken. That may explain some of the major issues I’ve had with trying to get damn global search to work!
Sorry I confused you, my comment about ‘signatures’ was in response to boredsquirrel (why a squirrel would ever be bored I don’t know :D), who commented on my change of my username, which was done because I couldn’t find a ‘signature’ option in my forum profile here
I only have one Thunderbird account! Constantly fails to show emails that exactly match the search query.
should do that too