Simply migrate an existing profile, and then delete the accounts not needed. You may also want to delete the corresponding mail files in the profile folder after that.

There is already a profile in use on the target machine with different email accounts. I dont need another profile on that machine. This is why I specifically said that I only want to migrate the ACCOUNT. If I import another PROFILE, the target machine will have two profiles. I do not want to restart Thunderbird and choose a different profile every time I need to use the migrated email account. There must be a better way!

You can manually carry over the desired data from the existing profile on one machine to the profile on the target machine. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Thunderbird

Well, these certainly are the specifications for the files which contain the data that I described. So I guess I cant fault you if no better documentation exists. But I think a reasonable person would have to admit that the information provided there will not be helpful to the overwhelming majority of Thunderbird users who want to accomplish the task I described:

There are still no dedicated step-by-step instructions for migrating email accounts — and copying the POP account folder does nothing. Also, directly copying files like 'prefs.js' or 'key3.db' and 'logins.json' from the source machine would damage settings on the target. So it looks like migrating individual accounts would involve editing the CONTENTS of files, not merely copying files.

In summary: there is no portable, modular file format which represents a Thunderbird mail account, its server settings, and the contents of the Inbox. Furthermore, the task of importing accounts cannot be performed just by copying files or folders. So you cant really migrate accounts between profiles without some developer skills and a thorough understanding of the internal file structures. Would you agree with that statement?

Sort of. It isn't rocket science though. Create the account again on the target machine, and follow the instructions to carry over the existing mail data from the other machine.

To be fair though, it's unnecessarily complex, and about as far from user-friendly as you could get. To some extent, this design flaw could even be characterized as an unintentional trap:

We adopted Thunderbird because we thought it would be easy to migrate data between different platforms -- but now we find that it's actually quite a challenge to migrate data on the same platform! And Thunderbird is far better at importing data from other mail apps than it is at getting data from itself!

That is a bit of a shocker, and something which should be addressed in plain English for the benefit of everyone else who will be confused and frustrated by the missing import/export functionality. The task I described should involve a few clicks in the wizard... not a day's worth of research. It's also important to flesh out a description of the issues we are facing here because we must thoroughly document a use case for this feature if we want developers to notice it.

I still think the majority of TB users would not find this level of manual intervention to be an acceptable solution (and many will never find it at all.) So if I don't regard it as one, I hope you understand that this is due to the unresolved design flaws, not for a lack of support. In future, I hope one of the responses is going to be something like:

"Try the new import/export wizard here - now it supports Thunderbird !"

=)

The majority of users have no interest in this capability. Try to find someone else asking for this.

The low level of interest in such a feature is a significant bar to its being worked on.

In a business situation, I'd expect people to be using enterprise grade solutions and handle this at the server.

Well, here's another user belonging to the hastily labeled 'minority'. (so far, we're a minority of "2" but I'd suspect others just haven't found this page to chime in yet)

I have a use case of two people currently using one machine (husband and wife) using the same OS user profile and the same Thunderbird profile. They want to separate these into two OS users and thus two mail profiles. Thunderbird provides no way to do this.

I want to export all of the mail, login credentials, settings, et cetera for a single mail account and import that into a new profile for a new OS user. NONE of the answers above allow me to do this. Everything pointed to as an answer above assumes moving all content in a profile, not just a single mail account.

I've also encountered this need in business situations. (not every business with multiple mail users is an 'enterprise' - that was a very dismissively rude assumption)

When employees turn over or change jobs, one of my clients has a need to migrate mail from one machine to the new employee's machine. Whenever the original employee profile contains other e-mail accounts, this has never been possible. We've had to resort to recreating manually the account with all settings and then re-downloading the mail again on the new machine which puts quite the load on the mail server. It would be much simpler to be able to migrate that data internally.

The ability to export a 'mail account' would be very useful.

AdrienM, please start a new topic for your problem.

@AdrienM we're a minority of 2 but I'd suspect others just haven't found this page to chime in yet

Precisely. I think there are vast numbers of people who would have used this feature at some point if it existed. It is a proven statistical fact that most people dont complain when they are dissatisfied, they just migrate to another product. And some of the people who found this forum dont know how to express what they wanted to do. Even the Mozilla support rep who answered my original post did not initially comprehend what I was saying, and I had to re-state the issue. The lack of complaints in this very obscure location does not represent proof of a lack of interest or need.

@AdrienM not every business with multiple mail users is an 'enterprise' - that was a very dismissively rude assumption.

I agree. The response was unnecessarily rude and condescending. I was talking about a small non-profit run by volunteers. There are hundreds of thousands of similar organizations -- particularly homeless shelters, food & clothing banks, et cetera. Even if TB wont support the requested feature, the staff should not sneer at users who point out a design flaw and the lack of disclosure (or lack of documentation) which has caused countless people to waste countless hours researching something that cannot be done. Had we known it would come to this, we would not have started with Thunderbird in the first place.

We are not ungrateful for open source software, but I dont see a justification for the hostile attitude when I am just documenting and characterizing a legitimate issue. This is a public service: If I had seen a thread like this before I started using Thunderbird, I would have used something else. People need to know when a product is not going to meet their needs. When the user sees that Thunderbird can import accounts from other mail clients, they will never suspect that Thunderbird can not import the same data from itself. It is irresponsible not to disclose this critical flaw on the download page.

@christ1 - It isn't rocket science

One of the most disappointing things I see here is that you just cant admit there is no practical solution supported by the TB user interface at this time, and you try to belittle people who point that out after working so hard to reach this conclusion.

@Zenos - The majority of users have no interest in this capability

I repeat: the lack of complaints in this very obscure location does not represent proof of a lack of interest or need. I dont know how you can claim there is no appreciable need or demand for an import-export wizard that works with Thunderbird when there is one that works with other mail clients!

@christ1 - AdrienM, please start a new topic for your problem.

Why should Adrien start a new topic for the same problem? It sounds like youre trying to prevent this issue from gaining too much attention so you wont be proven wrong when you claim there is no interest. There is a voting button here which says "I have this problem too". You must be aware that your instructions are going to defeat the purpose of that voting button by diffusing complaints for the same issue into separate topics, so the issue always ranks low in reports and charts which illustrate the popularity of support topics.

I would encourage others with the same problem to disobey this instruction to post elsewhere unless Mozilla's senior management explicitly approves Christ's attempt to defeat the statistics collection feature of this support site.

AdrienM said

The ability to export a 'mail account' would be very useful.

Migrate the profile and remove the unnecessary accounts. from both instances. Or USE IMAP in the first place so all that is needed is to add the account to the gaining profile and remove it from the loosing one.

I would encourage others with the same problem to disobey this instruction to post elsewhere unless Mozilla's senior management explicitly approves Christ's attempt to defeat the statistics collection feature of this support site.

Before you open your mouth, you might want to read the terms of use for the forum. Personally I really do not care, but Mozillas position is one user and one problem per thread. I really have no idea what you hope to achieve with the defiant attitude. Thunderbird does not have the feature you ask for and in all probability never will.

You can gather as many folk to sign your petition as you like, it will not remove the problem that unless you hire your own developers and pay for the feature it is unlikely to happen.

Perhaps you think your "need" or "want" is important. I am sure it is to you. But in the scheme of things is is not important at all. Mozilla left the bug requesting a profile migration tool open for almost 17 years and then closed it 2 years ago because "The decision here is that we don't have the resources (engineering, product, QA, maintenance) to do this feature well, compared to the many other features we could work on. So we won't accept patches for this feature. " So an account migration including disentangling of information in the prefs.js file, extracting of contacts and general messing around with calendars to work out which is which is not going to fly. Not until we have a profile migration tool which would be of benefit to every user that changes machines, not just some.