How to move Thunderbird to a new computer 2023 - Email accounts, folders, filters + contacts Mac
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- I will show you a super easy way to move your Thunderbird data from one computer to a new one
It is pretty much copy and paste, then import.
Copies:
Email Accounts
Email folders
Address book
Calendar
Email filters
Email signatures
Step-by-step guide on how to do it.
You will need a USB memory stick to copy the files
You will need to know your email account passwords
Google accounts will need re-verification
If you're on Apple you could airdrop them
Very clear. I wound up simply copying my profile from the old PC, installing and opening Thunderbird on the new PC, going to "Import" and was able to import everything except, as you noted, email passwords. Yours was the method that I've used previously and it works.
Glad it helped!
Thank you so much! I had watched several other videos that seemed far more complicated. I’m no longer in the first flush of youth so can have some problems. Even yours didn’t always match up with what I had on my screen but I did eventually manage it after a few frustrations. Yours was the only one that offered this old codger some hope
Glad it helped!
Very clear. NO steps glossed over. That's good, as even one unclear step, well, you know how computers work--they don't correct for ignorances. : )
your welcome :)
YOU Sir are MAGNIFICENT!!!! I was able to do on a PC and WOW! A huge humble thank you to you!
You're very welcome!
Wonderfully helpful, thanks so much! Note that when I did the transfer just now (v. 128.4.2) Thunderbird automatically incorporated all the passwords, so it was even easier than you showed!
Great it imports passwords now :)
dude, this has been so helpful, you can't imagine. Even my passwords were carried over, zero hassle!
Ideal, happy it worked for you :)
Thanks a lot, i successfully competed TB backup to new laptop from my old linux one.
Great 👍
Thank you! Your instructions are better and more effective than the ones Thunderbird posted on their website. Much appreciated :)
Great to hear!
Worked for me, thanks for the upload.
Glad it helped
Great video. Thank you very much for sharing that info.
My pleasure!
Thanks for this tutorial. I know you are using a Mac but the instructions worked almost the same with Windows machines. One difference is that I did not need to do the import step which didn't make any sense to me anyway since I copied all the information into the existing default profile. I also did not need to reenter my passwords. Separately, I find this procedure rather cumbersome compared to how we formerly could just select the address book and do a simple export and import - it was both simpler and quicker (though a syncing function would be much better). I hope Thunderbird gets an update to make this easier.
Mozilla need to improve import and export
Thank you so much for your tutorial. Easy to follow and worked out of the box. Thanks again!
:)
Many thanks J Tech. I have struggled with this in the past having an iMac as most illustrations I have viewed have been for Windows machines.
Top man, much appreciated.
You're welcome!
A real bummer that the rules don't get imported - and my plugins - and the settings of these plugins. That's what I hoped. Setting up my mail is not so hard with IMAP. So it the import / export does not really do a lot for me. Not your fault of course. You did an awesome job explaining the process!
Yeah its kinda a bummer they dont have that in the options. Plan B, set the rules on the server in Cpanel would also work, this is handy when you have multiple devices on imap
@@JTechWP Yeah, that would be an option. You are totally right. Thanks for reminding me. I already have some rules on my server from back in the day - but most of the newer ones in TB. So a migration could be helpful. :-) And they would show up sorted on my iphone too ... hmmm ... ;-)
Thank you so much. Much pain has been avoided.
Glad it helped
Thanks! This helped me! :D
Glad I could help!
You are a life saver! Thank you!
Happy to help!
Thank you. I have an outlook account using POP3. I don't want to use outlook anymore and I want to transfer to thunderbird. How can I transfer the outlook email and settings to thunderbird? 🙂
Install thunderbird, use your email settings to setup the account, IMAP is a much better option as it will syncronise across all your devices. I dont use outlook, but you could try exporting emails as a PST file then importing into Thunderbird
@@JTechWP Thank you. I will give it a go 🙂
Thank you!
Welcome!
Excellent
:)
Wow, that looks easy! Will it work the same (more or less) from a Windows10 PC to a new Mac?
Should be the same process, make sure your running latest version of Thunderbird on each machine
@@JTechWPWorked like a dream, imported my old Windows 10 Thunderbird mails to my new Mac Air M3 in the glint of an eye! Thanks
Well I think you might need to redo your instructions. I just got my new Win11 pc and downloaded Thunderbird vers 115.0 and went through
all your steps exactly like I did on my other Laptop with Win 10 on it and it gave me the same Red Warning stripe up on the top of the window that says. Import from a Thunderbird profile. And it says: Import failed unexpectedly, more information may be available in the error console.
Now on my laptop I went back and restarted Thunderbird and everything was there it actually worked. So lets see now with this Win 11,
if I close it and reopen it. And low n behold it started popping up requests for my passwords for all the emails I had and again it worked,
even though it had said it failed. So maybe mention that possibility and to ignore it and close Thunderbird and open it again and you will have it.
Thanks for letting me know, seems to be a Windows version error. Will mention it next time ir upgrade the Mac and transfer everything to the new machine.
@@JTechWP Actually its still not right. All my personal local folder .sbd are not showing up. Trying to figure out how to get them to show up.
Actually the .sbd file was there and I had to import it in another way and all my personal folders appeared with all the emails.
@@consciousalliance1608 so it’s all working now ?
Thank you so much
You're most welcome
Thanks!
Welcome!
I run the newest TB on both systems, I want to save my address book only and import to the other system, just address book.
in Thunderbird 115, click on the address book icon, this opens all your address books, right click the address book, export
made a video guide for you th-cam.com/users/shortsEOhNNTnK0iU?feature=share
Thanks J, I will give it a try.
Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't sync be more efficient ?
possibly, this is the method that worked for me
Thanks
Welcome
Must I also delete the default release folder? It imported successfully but it does not show any of my mail from the previous file.
If the emails are imported you dont need to do anything else
I Kept hitting continue and many pages were missing the circles for selecting but I got to the last page at: Import from a Thunderbird profile and all the data to be imported was showing checked and then when I clicked on Start Import a red bar hi-lite showed at the top and with text saying:
Import failed unexpectedly, more information may be available in the Error Console. And thats it. So what do you think went on for me?
Could be an anti virus program blocking Thunderbird maybe. Try doing windows update and run export/import again. If that doesnt work contact Thunderbird support
Will my accounts work as soon as I add the password, or do I have to go through all the rigmarole off adding codes etc?
should work as soon as you add the passwords
Watched the Video 3 times, Went through everything step by step but the current version of ThunderBird 102.8.0 (64-bit) keeps giving me an error message in red at the top of the dialog box. Not sure what they changed. I did notice when I tried to back up to a thumb drive that there were two files that had violated Windows 255 limit and it wouldn't transfer those. One had zero bits so that shouldn't have been a problem and the other looked like it belonged to a third-party email.
Have you got another drive you can try to transfer the files ?
@@JTechWP Actually I tried it both using Drop Box and also using a thumb drive. The violation is a built in Windows setting by Microsoft so it really doesn't matter what type of device I use it's a Windows Problem. I don't understand how Mozilla would allow files to be created in violation of a windows restriction like this? Is this bad programming? Because I certainly am not naming these files, they are being generated by the program.
I did everything as you showed - my emails from 2012 to 2018 got imported but not from 2018 to 2024. Help please!
Make sure the old machine Thunderbird is running the latest version, then try again. If that doesn’t work contact Mozilla support
It worked on my PC. I just wonder if I could have renamed my imported profile to the name of the new profile, then added x to the front of the new profile to seethat it worked--then go back and delete this.
if you have it backed up try it and let me know ;)
What about if you have the info on a drive that's from an recent system?
Can you go into more detail please ?
@@JTechWP another install of thunderbird on another drive from a previouse win10 install. Would it be the same
I'm using version Thunderbird 102.4.2 and they've changed the menu items. It doesn't have a tab marked Export ... only Import!!!
Did you get the import working ?
this is great if the original computer is still running. in my case, the original computer's motherboard died. any suggestions?
take out the hard drive, the Thunderbird file should be on there, if you canconnect the drive to another computer you should be able to copy the profile off the old drive, import onto the new one
did you set up Thunderbird at all on the new PC before adding the profile? You show going from the welcome screen to going to tools which is not on that screen. Please reply.
If the welcome screen pops up click the X and close it. The import will work even if you setup a profile.
I get 2:58 in and your instructions show Choosing Import from another Thunderbird installation but mine shows Import from another Thunderbird Installation but on the left its missing its circle to choose it. Any ideas why. I have followed everything perfectly till now and
I can't continue. Do I just have a faulty installation of of Version 115.0??? Help?
are you on PC or Mac ?
@@JTechWP PC now my old profile was on a Mac
tried this on a new install and it did not pull in any of my local or subfolders am I missing a step?
Did you get it working ? copying the folder would have the sub folders inside
You copied all files from the old profile to the default profile and then selected import from the default profile. I think the 1st step is unnecessary. Start import, select the old profile to import from and then all messages are imported in the default profile without having to copy them first. Or am I missing something? Thanks for the movie!
I guess you could do it that way, i read the guide from Mozilla and followed that
Same here. New to Win 11 today! Seems paste with replace doesn't work . After several hours, I simply pointed the Import function at the profile my memory stick and, voila, came up perfectly. Brought over the server passwords as well.
My PC crashed taking my Thunderbird password with it!!!! What can I do to recover the password????
Ask the provider to do a password reset
@@JTechWP I've read if they reset the password everything is lost, all my files, contacts...
'the only problem is - it's probably gonna forget your passwords' - said very fast - confidence inspiring - not !
each time I've imported it asked me for the passwords. Security feature
Try change the title to MAC
updated the title, it should work a similar way on PC
Yeah, that didn't work.
Thunderbird had a big update lately to version 115, i havent tried it on the latest one
@@JTechWP No worries. This stuff is hard! I', on 102. Turns out that the export has to be from local files in T-bird, so they had to be moved there. Then a few other niggles. Also worth noting that folders that have buggered e-mails (usually html code) can be fixed with right clock on folder then "repair."
Can you be less informative and do it faster, or was this video only for your own personnel value.
Just trying to make sure I cover everything you need to know to get the account move done properly
when I click open profile folder I don't see that same folder on mine, I'm using thunderbird 115.4.2
version 115.5.1 is the current version, click on about Thunderbird, it should prompt you to update to latest version
Excuse my ignorance in advance, I need to duplicate my Thunderbird email account onto a second computer (laptop) from my desktop. Using import as suggested by @marcelg.8774 and @stevetice below, I'm assuming when importing data it doesn't change anything on the desktop, resulting in both computers sharing the Thunderbird email account. Thanks in advance
You could copy the account from the old machine to the new one. Email accounts will be on the server using IMAP.
Then just add the email accounts to your other machines, it will all sync up via IMAP
Then recreate any filters on the other machines, ideally the best way to setup filters is in the CPanel, Email Filters