Thunderbird saves your personal information such as messages, passwords and user preferences in a set of files called your profile, which is stored in a separate location from the Thunderbird program files. You can have multiple Thunderbird profiles, each containing a separate set of user information. The Profile Manager allows you to create, remove, rename, and switch profiles.

• If you have (or plan to have) multiple installations of Thunderbird on one computer, see Dedicated profile per Thunderbird installation.

Starting the Profile Manager

Manage profiles when Thunderbird is open

Go to Help > Troubleshooting Information through the Thunderbird hamburger menu or menu bar. If the Thunderbird menu bar is not visible, press the Alt key on your keyboard to temporarily make it visible.

or

On the Troubleshooting Information page that opens, click the about:profiles link.

This will open the About Profiles page shown in the image below.

The following options are available:

• Create a New Profile Click this and follow the prompts in the Create Profile Wizard (see the Creating a profile section below for details). After you finish creating the new profile, it will be listed in the Profile Manager. The new profile will become the default and will be used the next time you start Thunderbird.

To manage profiles, find the profile you want to change and choose from these buttons underneath that profile:

• Rename Click this to change the name of a profile in the Profile Manager. Note: The folder containing the files for the profile is not renamed.

• Remove Click this to delete a profile. (The profile in use cannot be deleted.) Don't Delete Files is the preferred option. See the Removing a profile section below for more information.

• Set as default profile This option allows you to switch profiles. Click this to make Thunderbird use this profile by default at startup.

• Launch profile in new browser When you click this, another Thunderbird window will open using that profile.

Start the Profile Manager when Thunderbird is closed

If the Profile Manager window still does not open, Thunderbird may have been running in the background, even though it was not visible. Close all instances of Thunderbird or restart the computer and then try again.

Creating a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as explained above, you can create a new, additional profile as follows:

1. In the Profile Manager, click Create Profile… to start the Create Profile Wizard.
2. Click Next and enter the name of the profile. Use a profile name that is descriptive, such as your personal name. This name is not exposed on the Internet.

   
   
   
   

3. Disregard the Choose Folder prompt unless you wish to choose where to store the profile on your computer.
   Warning: If you choose your own folder location for the profile, select a new or empty folder. If you choose a folder that isn't empty and you later remove the profile and choose the "Delete Files" option, everything inside that folder will be deleted.
4. To create the new profile, click FinishDone.

You will be taken back to the Profile Manager and the new profile will be listed.

Removing a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as explained above, you can remove an existing profile as follows:

1. In the Profile Manager, select the profile to remove, and click Delete Profile….
2. Confirm that you wish to delete the profile:

   
   
   
   

   • Don't Delete Files removes the profile from the Profile Manager yet retains the profile data files on your computer in the storage folder, so that your information is not lost. "Don't Delete Files" is the preferred option because it saves the old profile's folder and allows you to recover the files to a new profile.
   • Delete Files removes the profile and its files (including the profile bookmarks, settings, passwords, etc.). If you use the "Delete Files" option, the profile folder and files will be deleted. This action cannot be undone.
   • Cancel interrupts the profile deletion.

Renaming a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as explained above, you can rename a profile as follows:

1. In the Profile Manager, select the profile to rename, and then click Rename Profile….
2. Type a new name for the profile, then click OK or press Enter.

Options

These options are only available when you start the Profile Manager when Thunderbird is closed.

Work Offline

Choosing this option loads the selected profile and starts Thunderbird without connecting to the Internet. You can view previously viewed web pages and experiment with your profile.

Use the selected profile without asking at startup

When you have multiple profiles, this option tells Thunderbird what to do at every startup:

• If you check this option, the selected profile becomes the default, so Thunderbird will automatically load it every time it starts, until you choose a different default profile. To access other profiles, you must start the Profile Manager first.
• If you uncheck this option, Thunderbird will show you the Profile Manager each time it starts, so that you can select a profile to use.

Moving a profile

To copy all of your Thunderbird data and settings to another Thunderbird installation (e.g. when you get a new computer), you can make a backup of your Thunderbird profile, then restore it in your new location. For instructions on how to back up and restore a profile, see Backing up a profile. If you need to move your Thunderbird data (accounts, messages, passwords and other data) to a new computer, see Moving Thunderbird Data to a New Computer.

Recovering information from an old profile

If you have important information from an old Thunderbird profile, such as bookmarks, passwords, or user preferences, you can transfer that information to a new Thunderbird profile by copying the associated files. For instructions, see Recovering important data from an old profile. You can also switch to a previous profile to recover old profile data. See Recover user data missing after Firefox update for details.