The problem is your Linux TB is 68 and the W7 is 78. If the versions were identical, to the decimal, transferring the Thunderbird folder would work. In your case, it's better to delete the contents of the current Linux profile folder (not the folder) and copy in the contents of the W7 profile folder. Delete pkcs11.txt, then restart Linux TB and see if your W7 data is presented.

Thanks for your quick reply. The Profile folder in Linux is empty (see step 3) and I have deleted the pkcs11.txt before I moved the files over to .thundebird folder

Are you recommending I delete the Profile folder even though it is empty?

I have also checked the versions in both W7 and Linux on Thunderbird, and although they are not identical, they are both the latest version (or at least that is what Thunderbird > Help > About tells me).

You have to be very careful with names. There is a Profiles folder and there are profile folders. On Linux, launch TB in whatever profile is the current default, then Help/Troubleshooting, Profile Folder, Open Directory, to open the current profile folder. This can also be done from Help/Troubleshooting, about:profiles, which lists all registered profiles. Close TB, delete the contents of the Linux profile folder, copy in the contents of the W7 profile folder, delete pkcs11.txt.

The latest versions may be installed in Windows and Linux, but what matters is they are not the same version number.

Thanks for your advice.

I have deleted everything in the Linux .thunderbird folder, opened Thunderbird App, and the closed it so that I get a new profile folder.

I have deleted everything in that folder and copied the W7 Thunderbird files across to it (the PCs are on the same network so I am using the network connection to copy files across).

Of course as expected I am getting the “Profiles” folders from W7. I have taken screenshot of this folder so that you can see the profile references. Clearly they are different string to the .thunderbird profile.

I understand that I have to move the contents of these folders to main folder of .thunderbird (is that correct?).

If so, do I need to edit any of the files in these so that the profile references are the same as Linux profile reference (you can see that in the folder path bar).

Once again, copy the contents of the W7 profile folder into the (empty) ao....default or d7....default-release profile folder on the Linux computer, whichever one launches by default when you start TB.

It opens but no data from W7. When I look at the folder via Help it takes me to the same folder but now has a different reference numbers for both .default and .default-release!

However, this time I did not get the warning about version levels.

In case anyone is interested, the problem here is due to TB version:

Windows (78.7.1 - 32-bit) and Linux (68.10.0 64-bit) have different database structure, therefore you cannot migrate them directly. TB V 78.x has a major change of data structure, hence a lot of the addons from V68.x do not work on 78.x

Linux V 78.x has not been released yet, so until that is done the option is to dopwngrade Windows TB version to V68.x and then migrate to Linux. The problem is that there is no tools that I can find to downgrade without loss of data!

However, there appears to be a more painful way of explained in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1307403

I have not tried this but I will do this week and report back in case other people have the same issue.

Sounds like you are using some default app provided with Linux and not using the up to date version for Linux provided by Thunderbird. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/

Hi Toad-Hall

Thanks for your post.

No the Thunderbird is preloaded in Linux Mint, and 78 has not been approved and integrated by Ubuntu yet due to some stability issues.

There is still no date for release of TB78 for Ubuntu based packages including Mint.

V78 of Thunderbird uses different data structure and hence many functions cannot be migrated including sorting accounts in users preferred order (the add on does not work on 78), colour selection for folders, etc. etc.

I understand there is way of downgrading 78 to 68, but looks like it is risky. I will be giving it a go and see if I can follow the instructions to downgrade 78 to 68 on the Windows machine and then move the data to the Linux machine.

An update for anyone that is interested.

This morning my Linux Mint had the "Updates Available" warning. The list included Thunderbird V 78.

I updated TB, copied the files from Windows 7 to Linux Mint as described in my first post, and hey presto, all working fine.

Take away here is that you cannot copy profiles from V68 to V78, so both PCs need to have the same version of TB, otherise it will fail.

Thanks for all your input.