Migrated from W10 to Mac and have copied across the mail files however when starting the old files are ignored so I have lost all past email
I have migrated from Windows 10 to latest Mac 10.13.2. I have installed TB on the Mac. It has created default folders including one for ImapMail. I have tried to copy the mail files from the Windows PC to the folder on the Mac. However TB ignores them and uses a new Inbox. As a result all historic emails are not there..only current emails that have been downloaded since the move. Checked in Account Settings and the profile folder is correct user\library\thunderbird\profiles\xxx.default. Tried to rename the newly created Inbox files and copy across original Inbox files but this did not work. Also tried copying the TB folder from W10 machine into a specifically named folder \user\thunderbird\ to mimic the W10 set up. Altered the Account Settings to show this as the folder for the Inbox as I did on W10. Had run it like this for years. Still did not work.
My objective is to be able to read the original files from the W10 system on the Mac so I do not lose the historic emails.
All Replies (3)
Have you copies the entire profile, which should work. Or tried to copy just mail files. Which is almost certain not to work.
Personally I recommend the copying is the Thunderbird folder and all sub folders. Not just the profile you were using.
Thank you for the response. So I should copy the contents of the W10 profile directory in the the user\library\thunderbird\profiles\xxx.default area on the Mac. I will try to create a new profile, copy everything into this and test it on this first
I'd suggest you copy
user\library\thunderbird\
to
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
so this will include the profiles.ini file.
However I suspect it might get into trouble if there are any Windows-style drive designations. I believe that like LInux, Mac OS doesn't use these.
If the profile is configured in the standard way, with /Profiles/ or your profile data folder as subfolders of the folder containing the profiles.ini file I believe it should find your data, though some add-ons may lose their way.