Local folders not showing after forced move.
I am using Debian 9 and thunderbird 68.2.2. I had to replace my hard drive, which no longer booted correctly. Because of this I was not able to do an Exmport/Import. I was still able to access my /home, and copied it entirely to the new drive after installing. Thunderbird recognized my account, and I am able to send and receive emails. My address books are intact. I have a top level Inbox and a top level "Local Folders", but none of the subfolders which I had under Inbox or Local Folders are showing in the left panel.
My .thunderbird/profiles.ini shows
[Profile1] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=lc4yasbx.default Default=1
[InstallFDC34C9F024745EB] Default=0runi62z.default-default Locked=1
[Profile0] Name=default-default IsRelative=1 Path=0runi62z.default-default
[General] StartWithLastProfile=1 Version=2
I copied the contents of my old installation to both lc4yasbx.default and 0runi62z.default-default. Both of these now contain a "Mail/Local Folders" which contains all my previously visible lcal folders.
I would assume that one or the other of these profiles would be active, and that my Local Folders would show up.
I *Do* see some differences in the folderTree.json in each of the profiles. I have trying renaming the existing folderTree.json in .thunderbird and replacing it with one that appears to have the complete tree, but this made no difference.
If i go into one of the default/Mail/Local Folders/Some-folder-name, I can open the files with a text editor and see that my old emails do still exist.
What am I missing? Is the thunderbird configuration *fully* documented somewhere? (Other than in the source.)
All Replies (2)
If you rename folderTree.json, I think it's better to let TB rebuild it automatically upon restart, rather than copy from another profile. But you may have better luck if you delete the .msf files in Mail/Local Folders and .sbd folders, while TB is closed, and then see if the folders show up under Local Folders when TB is restarted.
I ended up blowing away everything under .thunderbird and recopying from my old drive, and this time it worked. I suspect that when Thunderbird was reinstalled/activated on the new drive it created some default files that confused things. I also noticed that if I completely deleted its profile.ini that it started up with the account info anyway, so clearly it is not relying entirely on that for paths etc.
Anyway, problem solved.