Repair Corrupt Thunderbird Profiles and Extract Emails
Yesterday, my Thunderbird email application suddenly crashed. Seemingly something got corrupted. I have restored all my data with Mozbackup (it is to restore all elements or reducing it to just restoring the mail in various combinations) did not figure out the problem. All restored data got crashed within a fraction of seconds. Does anyone know a method to repair corrupt Thunderbird profile.
: Jourge Thomas (USA)
Doing a number of searches through Google did not point me to a working solution yet. So maybe your recommended solution could help me out in order to repair Thunderbird .msf files.
As everyone already knows that email has become an essential part of from home users to professionals. No doubt, as technology is growing day by day and so user’s demand. In order to get their demands fulfilled, they need a perfect and strong email application that would be easy to use and must be bundled with advanced features. Everyone is familiar with open source email applications in which Thunderbird is preferred as the user’s first choice. Let’s first take a look at What is Thunderbird and then we will continue about how to repair the Thunderbird profile?
Mozilla Thunderbird is a freeware open-source and cross-platform application that provides you with email functionalities in large quantities such as junk filtering, themes, message management, and much more. Thunderbird is developed by the Mozilla foundation. Thunderbird saves your messages, contacts, and settings in a folder named ‘Profile’ which is present at (for Windows): Below is the default location where Thunderbird stores its messages.
C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>
Some issues of corruption
- Deleted email still exists
- Thunderbird not displaying the inbox
- Email disappears or messages present are not shown
- The message may appear multiple times
- Messages keep reappearing even after delete
Best organizational practices recommend backing up your essential contacts and emails on a regular basis so that whenever a sudden crash happens to the system, you can easily get back all your data immediately. For instance, when using Thunderbird email client for business email accounts, and you need to create a backup of all your local emails in case of unintentional deletion, you can manually copy the emails from your Mozilla profile directory to a backup location for later retrieval. Then, in case of error, recovery is a matter of copying your backup files into your Mozilla profile directory.
Manual method to backup Thunderbird profile
Step 1. Close any running instances of Mozilla Thunderbird.
Step 2. Navigate to the profile directory, for example
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ProfileName, where “username” would be, is your Windows username and “Profile Name” is the Mozilla profile name in which the emails are registered under.
Step 3. Copy the Mail and ImapMail directories located within the profile name directory to a backup location. Alternatively, you may copy the entire profile name directory to backup your complete Mozilla profile.
Step 4. Copy the backup files back to their original location to restore Thunderbird. If for some reason you need to restore Thunderbird from the backups created, navigate back to C:\Users\username>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ProfileName. Delete the Mail and ImapMail folders located inside, and copy the backed-up Mail and the ImapMail folders into the profile directory.
Recommended Solution
If the above-mentioned manual process does not work, you can go for a third-party application to take a backup of corrupt Thunderbird profiles. Apply powerful Thunderbird Backup Wizard which quickly repairs corrupt Thunderbird profiles by automatically detecting them with complete information.
Some essential features provided by Thunderbird Backup
- Automatically detect the location and repair Thunderbird email folders
- Quickly repair Thunderbird address book with each and every bit of information
- Repair corrupt Thunderbird inbox
- Instantly repair Thunderbird email database.
- Repair Thunderbird email folders keeping folder structure throughout the process
- Supports backup of both MOZMSGS folders and WDSEML messages
- Allows saving a backup of Thunderbird email folders in multiple file formats such as MS Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Apple Mail.