We're calling on all EU-based Mozillians with iOS or iPadOS devices to help us monitor Apple’s new browser choice screens. Join the effort to hold Big Tech to account!

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

X-Mozilla-Keys, saving tags, sycronizing several Thunderbird profiles

geekosupremo
geekosupremo
more options

At the company I work for we use Thunderbird to access our POP business mail account, that is used for general support.

We have a variety of templates that I've worked up and have organized with tags.

I have backed up a 'master' version of the profile with all of this data, and have been keeping all of the Support reps updated by manually copying the whole profile folder to their Thunderbird profile on their PC.

I am hoping to simplify onboarding new comps and keeping the current ones up to date by only copying the necessary files. To this end I tried just copying the "Templates" and "Templates.msf" files to the desired profile. While this did bring the templates, it did not bring the associated tags.

I have found some promising data in "prefs.js" but if there is a better documented location that would be grand.

To summarize:

I want to know where tags are kept, so that I can make a master profile that a group of Thunderbird installations use to keep in sync.

At the company I work for we use Thunderbird to access our POP business mail account, that is used for general support. We have a variety of templates that I've worked up and have organized with tags. I have backed up a 'master' version of the profile with all of this data, and have been keeping all of the Support reps updated by manually copying the whole profile folder to their Thunderbird profile on their PC. I am hoping to simplify onboarding new comps and keeping the current ones up to date by only copying the necessary files. To this end I tried just copying the "Templates" and "Templates.msf" files to the desired profile. While this did bring the templates, it did not bring the associated tags. I have found some promising data in "prefs.js" but if there is a better documented location that would be grand. To summarize: I want to know where tags are kept, so that I can make a master profile that a group of Thunderbird installations use to keep in sync.

All Replies (2)

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

No MSF file is needed. The only time a tag may be in the MSF is when the mail ins on an IMAP mail server that does not support tags. It is really an old feature that supports old servers.

Tags are as you conclude included in the prefs.js file which is the repository of all Thunderbird non default preferences. It is at best poorly documented, in the same way the windows registry is poorly documented. Partially to stop people breaking things and partially because it is a dynamic location with add-ons also storing preferences in the file. It is however a standard text based JS file and if you are familiar with JavaScript you can manipulate is quite easily from a script as the formatting is also JavaScript based.

geekosupremo
geekosupremo Question owner
more options

Thank you, Matt.

So to summarize, if I keep the following files in "sync" on all the installs of Thunderbird it will look essentially the same?

  • Profiles > [profile-name] > Mail > [mail-account-name] > Templates
  • Profiles > [profile-name] > prefs.js
  • Profiles > [profile-name] > logins.json