How to restore Thunderbird profile to a single folder?
Thunderbird 115.1.0 (64-bit) on Windows 10.
I have set message storage to be under ...Documents\Thunderbird folder, it has these subfolders: browser-extension-data cache2 calendar-data crashes datareporting extension-store extensions Mail minidumps safebrowsing saved-telemetry-pings security_state settings shader-cache startupCache storage
Thunderbird has created another folder under ...AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird, with these subfolders: Crash Reports Pending Pings Profiles, containing folders jh11t9j9.default-release-1 and tv61xmax.default-release
Folders jh11t9j9.default-release-1 and tv61xmax.default-release both contain these subfolders: browser-extension-data calendar-data crashes datareporting minidumps saved-telemetry-pings security_state shader-cache storage
How do I combine these folders, (without losing any emails, passwords, filters, address book, calendar, and so on) so that I only have one profile folder to backup?
Modified by Rob Kam
Chosen solution
Create a new folder e.g. ...AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\Foobar Start Thunderbird profile manager (add -p to Target on the shortcut). Create a new profile e.g. Foobar profile Close Thunderbird Copy all the files from ...Documents\Thunderbird folder over the contents of folder ..\Foobar Start Thunderbird as normal, check everything is still intact and working. Start Thunderbird with -p again. Delete all the unused/extra profiles and rename the old folders, (to delete later sometime).
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Chosen Solution
Create a new folder e.g. ...AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\Foobar Start Thunderbird profile manager (add -p to Target on the shortcut). Create a new profile e.g. Foobar profile Close Thunderbird Copy all the files from ...Documents\Thunderbird folder over the contents of folder ..\Foobar Start Thunderbird as normal, check everything is still intact and working. Start Thunderbird with -p again. Delete all the unused/extra profiles and rename the old folders, (to delete later sometime).
Modified by Rob Kam
There is no such thing as a single folder for storage. Generally most of this goes on in the hidden appdata folder, but you apparently are dissatisfied with the standard location of your operating system (appdata) and have chosen to mess up your documents with Thunderbird data.
Personally I fail to even understand this desire to clutter up document folders with application data.
How do I combine these folders, (without losing any emails, passwords, filters, address book, calendar, and so on) so that I only have one profile folder to backup?
You can not. Most of them are application data anyway, not profile data.
Generally the profile folder and it's children is what you back up. This is the folder you land in when you click on the profile show button in the Troubleshooting information on the help menu. As for a backup to be functional Thunderbird must not be running on the system most automated backups of Thunderbird simply are either corrupt or incomplete, especially those created by backup routines that require the data to be in the documents folder.
Personally I use the backup option in the importexport tools https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools-ng/?src=ss I do find it much faster to just copy and paste the appropriate folder to a backup location as required. As most peoples contacts, calendars and mail as held on caldav, carddav and IMAP servers, to importance of backups of this data is significantly less that is was 20 years ago. But to what extent you have copies of data in the cloud will depend on how you have configured your Thunderbird.