I recommend one installation of thunderbird, and two profiles. - Set up one profile for your talktalk accounts - then, click help>troubleshootinginformation, scroll down to 'profiles' and click 'about:profiles' - next, click the 'create profile' button in upper left, click next, enter short name for your google accounts, e.g., 'GOOGLE', and then click the choose button to create the new profile and select it. - Now, you're in the new profile and can set up your google accounts.

Once all that is done, you will already have one icon on desktop for thunderbird. Copy and paste a duplicate and rename to 'google email' (or whatever). Now, rightclick on the icon and in properties, enter this

 thunderbird.exe -profile "c:\users\<yourid>\appdata/roaming\thunderbird\profiles\<yourgoogleprofilename>" (be sure to NOT use the <> characters.)

You now have two icons, one for each profile.

Hi David, Thanks for your reply. I hope to attempt this later - as I generally hit the wrong buttons, I may have to ask for further advice. So while this will solve my problem, I would like to keep this open, so that I can come back and get more assistance.

HM (It was only after I posted my question that I found the "profiles" information.)

That's ok. I had a typo anyway. The suggested syntax for the icon had "thunderbird.exe - profile ..." but that should have been "thunderbird.exe -profilemgr ....' or, you could stay with one icon on desktop (easier) and just rightclick properties and set to include -p , e.g., c:\program files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe -p and windows will prompt for the preferred profile.

Thanks again David.

Does

(David says: you could stay with one icon on desktop (easier) and just rightclick properties and set to include -p , e.g., c:\program files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe -p and windows will prompt for the preferred profile.)

1) affect the original information stored (I have been using Thunderbird for many, many years and obviously don't want to corrupt the information/emails stored.

2) need to be done while signed in ( I scim read info last night and saw both logged in and not logged in - but can't find the relevant page now)

HM

The profiles are unaffected. You will have two in the ...appdata\thunderbird\profiles folder.

The use of either approach would be to exit thunderbird for one profile before opening for another profile. (Windows would interrupt anyway, as you cannot run two instances of the program.)

Once this is all done and working to your satisfaction, I encourage doing periodic backups. The best way is this: - exit thunderbird - copy c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to external media (this copies both profiles at same time)

If you ever need to restore, just - install thunderbird and exit - copy the backed up thunderbird folder to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming to overwrite the default entry.

Let me know as you go. Fundamentally, this is simple for people familiar with Windows, but I admit it can seem impossible to others. :)

as they say a little knowledge is dangerous - I have managed to "kill" two systems (corrupt hard drives) in the past, so now (occasionally) tread carefully when changing something that "works".

Perhaps read the support documentation on profiles and the profile manager.

See the profile manager discussed here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles

This is the -p David suggested.  It invokes the profile manager.

See the discussion on profiles so you appreciate how Thunderbird stores your data on your machine. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

Finally in the documentation is this article which discusses the use of multiple profiles. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-multiple-profiles

This letter document covers most of the stuff in the first, but I feel for completeness I need to suggest all three.

Finally once you have you two instances of Thunderbird using separate profiles, this addon makes switching between them a breeze https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/profile-switcher/?src=ss it does not have both getting mail at the same time as would be the case with using the profile manager to start two instances.

Now to the real caveat. Windows and all other Operating Systems I am aware of rely on you having a "default" mail client that opens when mail functionality is needed, like clicking a mailto: link. Having two instances of Thunderbird open with two profiles is all good, but when you click that link, the default profile will be used so you will have to take some care at those times you are not trying to send from the wrong profile.