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Trouble Moving the Thunderbird Profile to another Mac drive

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  • Last reply by Matt

Bill Planey
Bill Planey
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I have a MacPro which runs three different OSes. I want to boot to any of them and be completely current with my email, so the goal is to locate the Thunderbird Profile to a neutral, non-boot drive that is always available. I have an internal drive in one of my drive bays that is perfect for this. I tried to follow the directions for changing the "profiles.ini" file on my current boot volume, but even with that done, it still makes a new folder. I just want Thunderbird to quit referencing the old location and start referencing the new one. I thought I had updated the "profiles.ini" properly, and, having deleted the actual profile folder within the Profiles folder inside it, it still wanted to create a new one with all the default stuff empty. So it obviously was not looking to the Profile folder I had copied earlier to the neutral drive, even though I put the path in the .ini file and changed the path under [Profile0] and set IsRelative to 0. Should I also have changed the path to the [Install712DAF5A23ABECDC] portion of this .ini file to the new one and unlocked it?

Is there a way to ALSO have the "profiles.ini" file and all the apparatus around it on the neutral volume so that EACH version of Thunderbird, no matter which OS is currently booted, accesses this info from there?

I wish this kind of instruction was explained better.

I have a MacPro which runs three different OSes. I want to boot to any of them and be completely current with my email, so the goal is to locate the Thunderbird Profile to a neutral, non-boot drive that is always available. I have an internal drive in one of my drive bays that is perfect for this. I tried to follow the directions for changing the "profiles.ini" file on my current boot volume, but even with that done, it still makes a new folder. I just want Thunderbird to quit referencing the old location and start referencing the new one. I thought I had updated the "profiles.ini" properly, and, having deleted the actual profile folder within the Profiles folder inside it, it still wanted to create a new one with all the default stuff empty. So it obviously was not looking to the Profile folder I had copied earlier to the neutral drive, even though I put the path in the .ini file and changed the path under [Profile0] and set IsRelative to 0. Should I also have changed the path to the [Install712DAF5A23ABECDC] portion of this .ini file to the new one and unlocked it? Is there a way to ALSO have the "profiles.ini" file and all the apparatus around it on the neutral volume so that EACH version of Thunderbird, no matter which OS is currently booted, accesses this info from there? I wish this kind of instruction was explained better.

All Replies (4)

Matt
Matt
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Tried using the official instruction for the profile manager. Editing the profiles.ini is most likely to cause trouble than fix it these days. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles#thunderbird:mac:tb91

Bill Planey
Bill Planey Question owner
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I don't know what I did, but I still have my Profile Folder and all of its data. But Thunderbird behaves like there is nothing - like a fresh install with no accounts or anything.

How can I make it utilize the data that I still have?

Bill Planey
Bill Planey Question owner
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There should be a command of this sort:

"Choose existing Profile Folder"

Matt
Matt
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Bill Planey said
There should be a command of this sort: "Choose existing Profile Folder"

Well there is not. Version 102 will come with a profile import export. Until then you have to get by with creating a new profile and pointing the location to the existing one you want to use. Same as it has been since Netscape wrote the original program 20 something years ago.