if you actually move your profile folder correctly then the locations in the account settings will not require an change. That you felt that necessary would indicate you messed up way back at the beginning somewhere.

I suggest you delete everything you have copied and copy the entire profile folder again. Do not manually update the profile ini file, use the profile manager to do so. by creating a new profile and pointing it to your old copied profile.

Nothing like taking our fingers out of the process to reduce errors.

thank you very much for you understanding I follow your reasoning.

for your info I followed these instructions https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_moving-a-profile which indicate to manually change the ini file I agree with you that the profile manager is a much better option.

For your understanding I suspect that the original profile folder is screwed up (I am not technical enough to understand everything at file level) the name of my profile folder is 7p54h7to.default to summarize I copied the one profile.default instead of the (parent folder) Profiles.

is my understanding correct or not?

I copied from the .7p etc .default on C: to U: then 'moved 'C: to a backup drive then copied the one on the backupdrive back to C:.

Now the situation is as follows. I had made another mistake (before I posted the question) which I realize now I changed the filename from 7p54h7to.default to a full text name omitting the code before the dot(did not respect the syntax). I realized this mistake and changed the file name back (without using the profile manager !) to the original file name 7p etc.default I do not realize what the consequences are of this action.

If I start the profilemanager it comes up with one profile the .default (name on U en C is identical) in the menu help troubleshooting points at appsdata roaming thunderbird profiles 7p54h etc.default (on C) however in the tools account settings servers settings it points at the U:\7peh7to.default, if I try to change that to the file on C: I get an error. Could be that the cause is the identical file name.

question is which is the original complete file ? logically would be the first copy to the U:

question should I change the name of the file on U: with the profilemanager? to avoid two identical names? and then copy the content of the older on U: back into the one on the C: drive (in an effort to reconstitute the completeness original folder?

sorry to be hesitant but I just want to make sure I fully understand you and that you have the complete information. I appreciate your comments very much.

Robert