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How do I migrate certain news items to a new profile?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by alta88

DLD-UK
DLD-UK
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Hi,

I have recently re-installed everything on my computer after been hit with malware. I moved my TB profile without any problems but I'm having major problems with certain RSS feeds. When I try to access some feeds I get an error saying "access denied". If I go to the same RSS feed in Firefox everything is fine.

So, I tried deleting the TB the feeds that I could no longer access and I then tried to re-add them. I then got a message saying that the feed did not exist. But the feed still worked fine in Firefox so clearly it does exist.

I don't know how the internals of TB works but I'm assuming it uses databases to store it's information. I'm also assuming that those databases have become corrupted for some reason. Clearly the message telling me the feed does not exist is not valid so something is confusing TB.

Ideally I would like to know how to sort this out with my current profile. But if that is not possible, I wondered if it is possible to copy selective items to a new profile. My email is working fine and so are most feeds, so I'd like to export those out of my current profile and import them into a new profile. Is this possible?

Any suggestions? Also, are there any documents on how TB actually stores it's data?

Many thanks.

Hi, I have recently re-installed everything on my computer after been hit with malware. I moved my TB profile without any problems but I'm having major problems with certain RSS feeds. When I try to access some feeds I get an error saying "access denied". If I go to the same RSS feed in Firefox everything is fine. So, I tried deleting the TB the feeds that I could no longer access and I then tried to re-add them. I then got a message saying that the feed did not exist. But the feed still worked fine in Firefox so clearly it does exist. I don't know how the internals of TB works but I'm assuming it uses databases to store it's information. I'm also assuming that those databases have become corrupted for some reason. Clearly the message telling me the feed does not exist is not valid so something is confusing TB. Ideally I would like to know how to sort this out with my current profile. But if that is not possible, I wondered if it is possible to copy selective items to a new profile. My email is working fine and so are most feeds, so I'd like to export those out of my current profile and import them into a new profile. Is this possible? Any suggestions? Also, are there any documents on how TB actually stores it's data? Many thanks.

All Replies (4)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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If you're ok to setup your RSS feeds from scratch I'd just delete the two files feeditems.rdf and feeds.rdf underneath Mail/News & Blogs in your profile folder. Only do that when Thunderbird is closed. You may create a backup of your profile before starting to mess with it.

DLD-UK
DLD-UK Question owner
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Thanks for the suggestion but I'm afraid I would really rather not do that as I still reference many of the feeds that are working. I've always found TB really good for searching through the feeds and I only keep those that are of interest.

I've never really looked through any of the TB files and I didn't realise that I could open the rdf files in a text editor. What I don't get is why TB is telling me that feeds don't exist when they do. Any ideas why that might be happening?

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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There's probably something corrupted in the .rdf files. You may want to take a look at the contents of the .rdf files. You can try to manually remove the offending feed from feeds.rdf. Make sure Thunderbird is closed when doing that. Tidying up feeditems.rdf is much more laborious.

Again, make sure to create a backup before starting to mess with it.

alta88
alta88
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Please read the guide carefully, particularly the validation note and FAQ: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-subscribe-news-feeds-and-blogs

The error console and logging will tell you why they don't exist or are invalid.

There's no reason to edit the database files directly. A good way to backup is to Export the feeds. You can easily create a new account and reimport them, with a fresh feeds.rdf and feeditems.rdf, although this is unnecessary unless you have an old pre Tb17 era account.