Back-up and restore Thunderbird e-mails

[Guest Challenger.]

In Linux, when you want to reinstall your system for any reason, you need to take a back-up of your data along with your e-mails in Thunderbird. Given below are a few simple steps that back-up e-mails manually.

Check for your Thunderbird e-mail and profile folder. If you have not changed it, it should be in /home//.thunderbird/.default_folder/

 

For example, the alphanumeric folder name on my system is vx3vg9j2.default

Copy the whole alphanumeric folder and place it in some other computer or storage device as an e-mail backup. Do remember to close Thunderbird before doing this.

 

After reinstalling your PC with any Linux-based OS, install the Thunderbird e-mail client and configure your e-mail credentials before closing the Thunderbird client.

 

Go to your Thunderbird folder in the new installation /home//.thunderbird/ folder. The alphanumeric named folder will be a different one now.

 

For example: /home/guest/.thunderbird/jx3gv9k2.default

 

Copy the contents of the old alphanumeric folder that is kept as a backup to the above location.

 

That is, you need to copy the contents of vx3vg9j2.default to jx3gv9k2.default

Now, open the Thunderbird client and you will find that all the e-mail credentials, e-mails, e-mail rules and address book will be available as they were before re-installation.